


Ten Days

by WashiPuppy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Eventual Shiro/Lance (Voltron), Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Hunk & Lance (Voltron) Friendship, Keith & Hunk (Voltron) Friendship, Keith & Pidge | Katie Holt Friendship, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Keith is the Leader, Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt Friendship, Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Lance Makes Bad Life Choices, Langst, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pidge is Angry a Lot, Pining Lance (Voltron), Post-Season/Series 02, Psychedelic Imagery, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Shiro is missing, Subtle but there, mature themes, violent imagery, white torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2018-11-14 11:03:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 88,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11206767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WashiPuppy/pseuds/WashiPuppy
Summary: Most people never got to learn exactly what their mind is worth, how resistant it is. Lance knew now, and the answer was ten days. It only took ten days for something in him to break that he wasn't sure he could get back.Shiro had survived a year and come out as someone still able to smile, to be kind and gentle with those around him. Scarred, but not shattered.Lance wore no new scars. But he still hadn't made it ten days.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onoheiwa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onoheiwa/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta red by [onoheiwa](http://archiveofourown.org/users/onoheiwa/pseuds/onoheiwa). A thousand thanks from me for being willing to work with me when I told her how long this would be - this is signifigantly better for her input and influence, and I've learned a lot just from her corrections.
> 
> Also some extra help from [Cazuki Rex](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Cazuki/), because I'm kind of a thoughtless idiot. Thanks ^^;
> 
> Reader beware / take note: Shance is intended, but be warned that it will not happen for a long time. This is set Post Season 2, and Shiro is still missing when this story begins. There is a lot of angst to get through before that happens.

Ten days.

Most people never got to learn exactly what their mind is worth, how resistant it is. Lance knew now, and the answer was ten days. It only took ten days for something in him to break that he wasn't sure he could get back.

Shiro had survived a year and come out as someone still able to smile, to be kind and gentle with those around him. Scarred, but not shattered.

Lance wore no new scars. But he still hadn't made it ten days.

* * *

"Man, this place is huge," Lance commented with a low whistle.

The four paladins looked around the sweeping central chamber of the Galran base. Pidge was already moving over to the computer system, cables in hand and a determined glint in her eyes.

The base itself was deep underground, lodged into the planet like a ragged splinter. The original inhabitants of this continent - Hyrito, the locals had said - had all been forced to flee to safer locations, leaving the surrounding area looking like some kind of post-apocalyptic disaster zone of abandoned homes and businesses, the farmland left to grow wild while countless buildings lay toppled from the earthquakes and other seismic activity that this place seemed to cause.

"What was it even used for?" Hunk asked, eyes darting around nervously.

"Pidge?" Keith asked, turning to the green paladin.

"Give me a moment, I'm still getting in," Pidge grumbled. "The cipher here is a bit different from normal."

Lance moved towards the door, only to find Keith already covering it. For a moment Lance thought about suggesting that maybe the man with the ranged weapon should watch the door, but discarded the idea. He just... didn't have it in him to argue again that he should be the one watching for approaching enemies. He never won that argument; Keith always cited Lance's training record as proof of his incompetence. He was tired of having the same arguments over and over, and honestly, he knew his performance in training wasn't as good as everyone else's, no matter how much extra practice he put in. He could go join Hunk, but he was covering Pidge and, well, Lance just tried to stay out of Pidge's way on missions.

No one was taking Shiro's disappearance well, but Keith and Pidge had both fallen into a super-serious-no-fun mode as a way of coping. Sometimes it was OK, but during training and on missions... 

Keith had thrown himself head-first into being the leader of Voltron, the way Shiro had apparently wanted (and didn't that just rankle Lance so, so badly, maybe making him lash out at Keith more than he should have). Pidge had sunk furiously into searching for her brother, trying to work out what happened to Shiro, and tearing down every last Galran computer system that didn't have any information on her father with a grim, humourless determination. 

Lance was just trying to fill the gaping hollow Shiro had left in his chest with empty laughter and humour. 

Instead of poking at either of those hornet nests, Lance wandered around the room under the pretext of scanning for anything that looked dangerous. In truth he was mostly just staring at all of the weird equipment and terminals. Maybe Pidge or Hunk, or even Coran, could have made sense of it, but to him the whole lot of it might as well have been the movie set for a mad scientist's lab. Still, there wasn't much else for him to do, what with Keith already watching the door and Hunk standing with Pidge, acting as both an assistant and to provide cover fire if the need arose. Lance was left to just... make himself useful, if he could.

Hey, why break the ongoing trend that was his life? Lance not having a real purpose on these missions was becoming increasingly common, especially without- with Shiro currently missing. His role was just being an extra body to throw at any problems they encountered without really having anything unique to add to the team. What few abilities he had, no one here actually had any faith in, aside from maybe Hunk, at a stretch, and definitely not in the middle of a battle or outside of his Lion.

But he still desperately felt the need to prove somehow that he was useful, that he belonged, and he could be a good paladin and great teammate if he just had the chance. But he never did.

Keith liked to have Hunk as his back-up fire power and he liked Hunk a lot better than he liked Lance, unsurprisingly. The two of them had always done really well on the few missions they'd had together, Hunk quickly gaining courage and competence in the face of Keith's demanding nature. Hunk was probably better at reading Keith's intentions now than even Lance was. They just worked well together, even hung out together more. Hunk said it was because he wanted to make sure Keith was OK, especially with everything that happened. He had a big heart, so of course he'd want to make sure their normally introverted teammate was surviving Shiro's disappearance (and Lance refused to call it a loss, definitely refused to say death). 

And Lance understood, he really did. His own feelings, however hurt they might be, were nothing compared to what Keith must be feeling. Or even Pidge, who had lost a friend and confidante, as well as another link to her family. Pidge was in the grip of some serious mood swings, rocketing between sad and despondent, to driven and focused, to mad at everyone and everything. Focused-Pidge couldn't tolerate Lance's inadequacies and Angry-Pidge would only really talk to Lance to use him as a verbal punching bag, railing at him mercilessly. He let her. She rarely said anything that wasn't pretty much true anyway, and if he didn't stay and listen to Angry-Pidge then the only Pidge he'd get to talk to was Sad-Pidge. If she even let Lance be around her then.

Thinking about it, Shiro hadn't really wanted Lance around either, even when it made the most sense for it to be him or he had something important to add. But maybe that was an illusion too - maybe it had never made sense, maybe he'd never had anything to add at all. Lance had been the spare tire for a long time now - useful only as far as any extra set of hands would be useful, less a worthy member of the team than just a pair of arms. It felt like he spent more time with Coran than he did with the other humans.

And now he'd made himself sad again. Perfect.

Lance huffed a careful sigh under his breath, trying to drag himself out of his depressing thoughts (they could wait until tonight, just like every other night) by continuing on his circuit of the room. It had one entrance and an open floor with thick cables and wiring running along it, taped down with something that looked a lot like duct tape that was striped black and reflective, neon pink. The same pink and black tape delineated walkways and paths around the cables and wires to various monitors and devices. The far wall was dark, made of metal that was traced over with deep grooves in a honeycomb pattern, with a monitor screen mounted on it that activated as Lance approached.

His eyes scanned over the panel, ignoring the Galran text he didn't understand, and instead noting the way the numbers were changing and various graphs were moving, showing some kind of fluctuating information.

"Right, got it!" Lance heard Pidge shout from the other side of the room, just at the edge of his hearing.

"Anything on what this facility was built for?" Keith asked. 

"I'm not sure," Pidge said. "It looks like it was a research lab of some kind, but... none of these numbers make any sense."

The graph showing something called the 'T.N.P. Barrier' in particular seemed to be spiking pretty far down into the red. Was red a danger colour for Galra? Lance couldn't remember, but given their preference for red as a military colour, it could go either way.

"But, whatever this place was? It was something big," Pidge continued. "It's been drawing a _lot_ of quintessence from the planet to power itself. That's why this place has been riddled with earthquakes and sinkholes lately."

"Hey, does anyone remember if Galra have that whole 'red equals bad' thing that we have?" Lance asked, tapping at the screen in an effort to bring up more information. The graph expanded, showing a longer, downward trend to the numbers. Something beeped suddenly and the numbers rapidly dropped down and flat-lined at zero.

"Lance!" Pidge called, just as Keith was shouting "What the quiznack did you do?"

"Nothing! I didn't do anything but look at some numbers!" Lance shouted back, backing away from the wall as it began to glow along the hexagon pattern.

"Dammit, Lance! Just once," Keith growled, just loud enough for Lance to be able to make out what he was saying, before he cut himself off and turned to Pidge. "Pidge, do what you can and let's get out of here."

Lance turned and ran towards the group as an odd hissing noise began coming from the far wall.

"Hold on - give me twenty-six seconds, I think I can cripple the system," Pidge said. 

Keith gave her a narrow-eyed look.

"Twenty-six seconds? Pidge, you're slipping," Lance joked, drawing Keith's attention away from the green paladin furiously typing on her laptop and to himself.

"Yes well, unfortunately the laws of physics still apply to me," Pidge snapped. 

Lance flinched back at the sharp tone. Right, he should have remembered. Super-serious-no-fun Pidge did not tolerate Lance. He lapsed into a cowed silence.

"We don't have twenty-six seconds," Keith called back from the door. "We've got incoming. Hunk, clear the halls!"

"On it," Hunk said, running past Keith to slide out into the hall, bayard braced against his body as he fired a volley of shots up the corridor.

"Lance, take rear guard," Keith said turning to him. Lance acknowledged the order with a sharp nod.

Keith turned back to Pidge, barking out his instructions."Pidge, pack it up. We're going now."

"Seriously, ten seconds! This is the whole reason we came here in the first place!" Pidge shouted back. 

Keith stalked towards her, face eerily calm. Not good. If Lance had learned anything about Keith as a leader, it was that his face was the most rigidly composed when he was trying desperately not to lose his temper with one of them mid-mission.

Lance never got the chance to work out exactly what he planned to do to diffuse the situation. The sounds of electricity dancing over metal and the howl of air forced through tiny holes filled the chamber. All three Paladins instinctively covered their ears, despite their helmets making any such action completely pointless. Lance could only just make out the laser fire in the hallway and Hunk shouting "Guys, are you coming, or...?" over the scream.

The wall slid away, each hexagon carefully folding back into the next to reveal enormous glass panels showing nothing but darkness on the other side. Something lurked beyond the glass, its outline barely discernable by the light of the central room. A pair of enormous eyes opened behind the glass, irises contracting rapidly in the light and glinting strange reflections.

Nope. Lance was on Keith's side this time. They needed to book it, now.

"Pidge!" Lance shouted, already making to grab the smaller paladin when her computer beeped cheerily and her troll-face appeared on the terminal screen. 

Pidge slammed her laptop shut. "Done, let's go!" Pidge shouted over the din. 

Lance shared a brief look with Keith before they bolted out into the hallway, shields raised. It looked like their retreat this time was going to be an old fashioned run-and-gun. Lance hefted his rifle with a grim smirk.

* * *

Lance was a positive person. Right now, he was positive they weren't going to make it back to the Lions any time soon.

He pressed himself back behind a pile of debris next to Keith, shaking his head. Getting out of the facility had been one thing. But then that... thing from the tank had broken out, taking up residence neatly between the paladins and the hidden Lions.

Whatever it was, it was enormous and mostly machine, like one of the robeasts. It moved on six bear-like legs with a pair of clawed hands at the front. It whistled sharply as it moved, clicking and crackling with electricity that it discharged at them as small, targeted bolts of lightning. Lance could feel something heavy and bright pushing against his mind whenever it looked over towards them. Somehow, whatever that thing was, it was aware of their exact position without needing to look directly at them.

"We'll have to go around it," Keith concluded. 

Lance didn't disagree, except...

"Pretty sure it can tell where we are, even if we can't see it. It might work better if we split its focus," Lance pointed out. 

Keith shook his head."I'm not splitting the team up," He said. "Together, we can escape as a unit. If we split into two groups, we're going to end up with fewer people trying to absorb all the firepower."

Lance huffed, but didn't argue the point. Honestly, he wasn't sold on the idea of splitting up anyway. That pressure on his mind returned and Lance instinctively knocked Keith down and out of the way as another bolt of lightning struck the metal debris they'd been hiding behind. Keith took the flying tackle with grace, bringing his shield over both of them to prevent the shower of sparks and molten metal from hitting anything that might combust. Lance felt the stinging prickle of electrical discharge over his legs and every hair on his body stood up.

For a second, Lance wondered how Keith's hair would look if he pulled the helmet off - would it be standing completely on end, like a hair metal band member from the 1980s? Because if so, that would be hilarious.

Lance pulled himself back up and peered over the pile, looking carefully at the robeast to try and get a better idea of how it moved. It was a lot quicker than those large paddle feet should have allowed, especially since each foot was tipped with huge metal claws crackling with electricity. It looked like a mutant badger that had gained superpowers from touching an electric fence. Or something. 

The half of its body that was upright could move independently, pivoting around to reveal a mess of torn cables and electrical pads that were probably originally used to get readings. It also had way more eyes on it than any torso should have, which for Lance was ideally zero, maybe two at a stretch. Its face was like a bear's with a long, broad muzzle filled with sharp teeth. The main difference was that this head was metallic, and had five eyes and a laser cannon in it's mouth. 

Huh. Five eyes? Hold on. One, two, three... four eyes on the head and four more on the chest, for a total of eight eyes overall.

Lance counted again, still counting four eyes on the head. So, why had he thought there were five?

The beast swung around, that heavy, oppressive force sliding off of the paladins for a moment and Lance counted again, just to be sure. One, two, three, four eyes, two on each side of the head and one more... one eye that was...

Lance blinked. There was one eye in the middle of the beast's forehead. How had he missed that? It was the biggest eye on its head!

That central eye locked on to the Galra troops that were currently attempting to suppress the robeast and Lance could _feel_ its focus move to check each Galra inside the armoured ship that was firing into its sides, even though it couldn't possibly see them. It raised a paw and a bolt of electricity ripped through the air to strike the vehicle, sending the whole thing crashing into the side of the base. The eye blinked, something behind it clicking and rotating, and then Lance lost sight of it.

It was hiding it's fifth... uh, ninth... whatever. It was hiding the big, middle eye, somehow, and not just by cloaking it. It was like Lance couldn't remember properly where it was, except for...

Except for just before it attacked. It had to have something to do with the way that thing could find them no matter which way it was facing, Lance was convinced. The eye was important enough to hide, but it seemed like it might take a lot of energy to do so. Energy that was diverted when it attacked, leaving the eye visible for a moment.

Keith grabbed Lance by the arm and started pulling him towards Hunk and Pidge who were trying to hide beneath a large, concrete slab when the crackle of electricity filled the air. "Break for it!" Keith shouted. Hunk and Pidge rolled out from under their makeshift shelter just as another bolt of lightning screamed between them, exploding the concrete into chunks.

"Keith!" Lance shouted, getting a quick glance that showed that Keith was listening before he returned his focus to the robeast. "I think I can stop it from being able to find us," Lance continued, "I just need to get a clear shot at it's head - there's a hidden weak spot there. It looks like an eye."

"No," Keith said immediately. "Right now its focus is split between us and the Galra. I don't want to risk you pulling all its attention onto us."

"If you let me take the shot that won't matter," Lance pointed out. "Once I break its eye-"

" **If** you even hit it," Keith interrupted. "Which is a pretty big ‘if.' _And_ if there really is a hidden weak spot, which I doubt, I don't know how you would even know that. Do not fire. That's an order."

"I know I can hit it." Lance said, insistent. Maybe he was pushing too hard, but Lance needed Keith to trust that he could do this. Otherwise what was the point of him being here at all? Why even have a sharpshooter if you never let him shoot things?

"No!" Keith snapped. "You're nowhere near that good a shot, so stop arguing with me and do as I ask!"

Lance stared, feeling his eyes widen in the face of Keith's determined glare. That was uncalled for. Lance already knew that Keith didn't think he could do, well, anything, but he had at least thought that Keith knew he could shoot. It was the only thing that he was any good at, the only thing he had to offer the team at all.

But to hear that Keith didn't even have any faith in _that_? To actually _hear_ him say that he didn't believe in Lance at all? Why did it hurt so much more?

No. He couldn't take the easy way out this time. He couldn't let it go. He knew what he was doing, knew he could hit that creature and blind it. 

But then what? He'd somehow prove that he still had a place on this team? That he still had worth, could be valuable somehow? Would it be worth the shouting and anger and arguments that would come later just to know he'd done something well for once?

Lance barely had enough time to answer the question for himself and think of a plan before he had to act. Steeling himself, Lance reached out and grabbed Keith, plastering a worried look on his face."No, Keith! You'll be killed! We need to make a break for it!" he shouted, loud enough for Pidge and Hunk to hear. 

Keith's glare fell into an expression of pure confusion."What?" He asked. 

Lance wrapped his arms around Keith's chest, latching on tight when Keith tried to struggle out of his grip. Excellent - it made the whole thing look a lot more believable to Hunk and Pidge, who had turned to watch.

"We can't lose you too,"Lance continued, "not now! You can't take them without your Lion!" Keith elbowed him sharply, and Lance only just managed to resist his attempts to struggle free. "Hunk! Help! This idiot thinks he should draw the Galra's focus so that _we_ can get to our Lions!"

"I-Huh?" Keith managed.

"What? No, that's suicide!" Hunk said, running forward. 

"That's what I said!" Lance shouted. Keith elbowed him again, this time hard enough to break free. Luckily, Hunk arrived just in time to easily sweep Keith over his shoulder into a fireman's carry.

"Hunk, put me _down_!" Keith growled. 

Lance shouted over him in his best panicked voice."We need to go now!" He felt the pressure of the robeast's focus coming back to them, which added an edge to the authentic, pants-darkening terror he was trying to infuse his voice with. "It's gonna fire another bolt!"

"Right," Hunk said, quickly turning tail and running away from the devastated landscape of the battle. 

Pidge gave him a look that clearly said she knew something was up, but the growing static in the air convinced her to settle for making a pointed 'I've got my eye on you' gesture before turning and following Hunk.

Lance rolled to the side, just far enough from the bolt of electricity that he was only spattered with molten dirt and fractured rock.He set himself up quickly just behind the crumpled, sheared-off side of a Galra land vehicle of some kind, using the warped dip at its top to rest his arms. Once they got out of this, he was going to have a lot of explaining to do. But right now there were more important things to focus on.

He took aim carefully, keeping his weapon trained on the robeast's face and in the general vicinity of its middle eye. He would only have a short window to actually aim directly at its eye once it became visible.

That bright weight fell over him again. Between the high, electric whine and the differential of pressure between the inside of his head and the air outside, his ears were killing him.

For a moment, the final eye opened in the center of the robeast's head.

Lance shifted his weight slightly and corrected his aim.

He breathed out. Focused.

All sound fell away aside from the thrumming of his own heart.

 _Ba-thump_.

He squeezed the trigger, firing two shots off.

Adjusted slightly higher and fired a third.

 _Ba-thump_.

His aim was good. The first shot struck home, exploding along the surface of the eye in a series of cracks.

His second shot punched through the lens, sending a fine spray of glass flying and shattering the mechanisms behind the eye. The creature reared back further than anticipated and his third shot struck just below the eye, flinging the shattered lens upwards into the sky like glittering confetti.

 _Ba-thump_.

Sound returned for a moment, just long enough for Lance to realise that the high-pitched whine had quieted, replaced entirely by the whistle of hot air through small cracks in the robeasts facial armour. The pressure lifted completely, and for a moment Lance felt so light he thought he might be able to leave the ground entirely without the weight of that creature's focus bearing down on him.

 _Ba-thump_.

There was another moment of dead silence, except that this one wasn't inside his own mind. The whole world was silent.

Then a sound like an explosion underwater roared out over the battlefield and a large sphere of pure force pressed outwards from the creature, rippling the stone and causing even the metal to flex and wave. Wind picked up in the wake of whatever the wave was, but nothing directly around Lance broke. Until it slammed into his mind like a kiloton bomb, obliterating anything even remotely resembling thought.

 _Ba-thump_.

Lance saw the creature fall just as consciousness left him, barely registering that he'd somehow managed to take out a beast bigger than the Black Lion with only three shots. Barely registering that none of the Galra seemed to have been knocked out by the blast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Okay, so I have, like, three Shklance stories in my head that are all kinda tropey and done, but I'd still like to write them. Although, I've started writing a follow up to "How Far Would You Go" that I should probably finish first. Oh, and I think I might have enough to start writing the last of Connections!
> 
> My Brain: (Drops an enormous stack of ideas on the table.) We're doing this now.
> 
> Me: But... That's gonna be really long!
> 
> My Brain: Oh yeah.
> 
> Me: And angsty! And I don't think anyone wants it! And did I mention long?
> 
> My Brain: Too bad.
> 
> Me: Can I at least add some Shance?
> 
> My Brain: This is an acceptable compropmise.
> 
> Me: Horay!
> 
> And that's the story of how I started writing this. I hope that it interests at least some of you.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> Shiro has gone missing. The remaining Paladins are not coping well with his disappearance - Pidge is angry and too serious, Keith has taken his place as the Black Paladin, Hunk is trying to make sure Keith doesn't fly apart, and Lance is mostly just there. 
> 
> The team haven't yet replaced Keith as the Red Paladin when they're sent on a mission to infultrate Galran laboritory and cripple the system. The mission goes south, and a new robeast is released with the ability to target the Paladins with lightning wherever they are. Lance spots a hidden weakness, but can't convince Keith to let him take a shot at it to cripple the beast. Desperate to prove himself, Lance takes drastic action to give himself the window to take down the Robeast, only to find himself knocked unconcious in the aftermath...

Keith had a unique viewpoint on the cause of the silence that fell across the countryside. As the trio fled, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he was left with the distinct feeling that he was being watched. That feeling was accompanied by a kind of... heaviness was the best way he could think of describing it. Like the weight of an entire unseen crowd watching, only more tangible and concentrated somehow.

Keith didn't doubt for a second that whatever was 'watching' him could see him clearly. He could only see glimpses of the creature through the black and white branches of the low scrubland trees that Hunk was running through, so he and Hunk should have been hidden completely. Unless this creature really was able to see them without needing a direct line of sight.

That feeling of static had filled the air for a brief moment. All the paladins had figured out by now that the feeling of static on the ground signaled an impending lightning strike, as though the electric charge around them was meant to act as some kind of targeting system. Then, just as the last strike should have hit, the air suddenly cleared.

No static. No weight. No feeling of being watched. Keith caught a brief glimpse of the creature's head being flung back, steam billowing out of an enormous hole in the center of its face. A blue bolt of energy struck it just below the cavity, sending smoke and shrapnel into the air.

Keith paused in his careful spiel to Hunk of explaining that it was Lance who wanted to go after the creature and Keith was not, in fact, planning to take on a giant bear monster all on his own.

There was absolutely no way. The Galran lasers had bounced off of the creature's head, completely ineffectual. There was no way that Lance's gun had enough fire power to punch through the creature's armour. Unless... 

Unless Lance really had seen a weak spot. Unless he really had managed to hit it.

Son of a bitch.

The creature began to slump over in a moment of chilling silence. Instantly, Hunk dove into an old, dry irrigation ditch. Keith was pretty sure he'd taken action to hide without even thinking about it, his well-honed protective instincts quite efficiently pointing out that a sudden quiet is never a good thing and that trenches make good defences. 

Hunk's protective instincts also extended to blatantly ignoring Keith's orders to put him down if he thought Keith was in danger, so he had carried Keith into the ditch with him. 

Keith completely lost sight of the creature in the confusion, but he could hear a long, low rumble, like some kind of large vehicle speeding towards them. Considering the fact that Hunk was no longer moving, Keith took the chance to slide off of the yellow paladin's shoulders and peer over the lip of the trench. 

Unsurprisingly, there was no Lance. There was a Pidge though.

The scrub behind Pidge shook and jumped as the pressure wave that was making that rumbling noise sped ever closer, encroaching on their positions. Keith frantically waved Pidge forwards despite knowing that Pidge was bolting as fast as she could, far more nimble than Hunk had been when he'd plowed through the low branches before her. She reached the edge of the ditch and wasted no time leaping down.

The blow of the pressure wave struck Pidge a hair's breadth away from being in the clear, knocking her off balance as she landed. She rolled into a flip that would have been impressive had she actually meant to do it. Since she hadn't, the move left her colliding inelegantly with the far side of the ditch and rolling back to the lowest point. Hunk and Keith both dove towards her, placing their shields over themselves and Pidge to ward off the influx of dirt and debris carried along by the force of the wave.

The next few ticks were nothing but sound and pressure. The rumbling passed overhead, the noise almost deafening and rattling the bones in Keith's ears. Trees didn't just sway, they _shuddered_ under the force of it. Branches were twisted off and flung meters away and a wall of loose dirt and rocks swept forwards and hovered more than a foot above the ground, floating around the paladins for a moment, before finally deigning to fall. The wind felt sharp with the bite of electricity, but nothing more than a few small, static shocks eventuated from it. Keith's brain felt like it was filled with pins and needles, a static hum surrounding his thoughts. 

Then, as suddenly as it hit, it passed and the world fell into a more natural quiet.

Keith shrugged hard against his shield, pushing the dirt and rocks off of himself. The ditch looked pretty clear, just some new debris littering the base of it.

Beside him, Hunk made a small pained sound that immediately set Keith on edge. He pushed Hunk's shield up and off of him, rolling the larger man over in the process. Hunks eyes were screwed shut with pain. His nose was bleeding and his teeth were clenched so tightly that Keith was irrationally worried that he might break them. 

Pidge hadn't moved at all, but Keith couldn't see her face clearly. He looked between them, trying to work out who he should check over for injuries first before settling on Hunk. He might be able to carry Pidge, but if Hunk was injured they'd need to call for assistance in getting back to the castle and it would be better to do that sooner rather than later.

As quickly as he could, Keith checked Hunk over for any obvious damage. There were no cracks or tears in his armour, and when he pressed on the more exposed parts, Hunk didn't give any indication that anything under them hurt. Once he was as sure as he could be that Hunk's body was fine, he removed the yellow paladin's helmet carefully.

Aside from the bloody nose, Keith couldn't find any injuries.

"Hunk? Can you hear me?" Keith asked. Hunk made no sign that he could hear anything, continuing to hiss in pain and grab uselessly at the dirt beneath him. Not getting any response was scarier than he wanted to admit.

"Come on Hunk, please!" Keith ordered, tapping Hunk lightly on the cheek. He most definitely didn't beg. "Say something!"

"...Mochi," Hunk hissed, his eyes fluttering open before squeezing shut again. 

Keith nearly laughed with relief. "What?"

"Ow," Hunk said with a groan. "My brain feels... Like it's been pounded into a... Gooey paste. Like mochi."

"At least you're awake now," Keith pointed out, moving quickly over to Pidge and carefully rolling her onto her back. Pidge, at least, seemed to be awake, although she had her eyes screwed shut as well, whole face pinched with discomfort. Keith touched her carefully on the shoulder and she started."Pidge? Pidge, are you OK?"

"WHAT, ME?" Pidge shouted in response. "YEAH, I'M PEACHY. JUST, Y'KNOW, SMALL FLYING TRIP AT THE END THERE. BUT I'M GOOD RIGHT NOW."

Hunk groaned. "Please stop shouting."

"YOU STOP SHOUTING FIRST," Pidge yelled back. She carefully sat up and shook her head.

"Pidge, no one is shouting," Keith pointed out. 

Pidge looked at him like he'd lost his mind before looking around the group."YOU HAVE TO BE. HOW ELSE COULD I HEAR YOU OVER THE ROAR?" she shouted, sounding rather reasonable, otherwise. "ANYWAY, WE SEEM TO BE MISSING A CERTAIN BLUE IDIOT."

Hunk winced and Keith pet him on the shoulder in what he hoped was a consoling manner.

"That's what I was trying to tell you before I was so rudely swept up and carried off," Keith began, trying to keep his words calm and relatively neutral despite the burning pit of aggression that had been steadily building inside of him. "Lance thought that he could disable the creature by shooting out one of its..." Keith hesitated for a moment, floundering for the words that Lance had used not even two minutes ago. If he was perfectly honest with himself, he had been too focused on how to get back to the lions to pay much attention to what exactly Lance had been saying. "...Weak spots? Somewhere around its eyes. I ordered him not to take the shot, so he spun that ridiculous story so that you'd take me away and he could do it without me trying to stop him."

Hunk looked suitably guilty. Combined with the pained looks that still flashed across his face, he painted a thoroughly pathetic picture that helped quell some of Keith's anger. "Sorry about that. I should have known that you wouldn't do that sort of thing any more."

"Any more?" Keith asked indignantly, before stopping for a moment to think back.

Oh. Yeah, Okay. So running off and attacking things bigger and more powerful than him wasn't exactly something he'd avoided. Even recently. Keith pressed his mouth into a thin line. "Whatever. The point is, Lance isn't here right now because he stayed behind to take the shot."

"That was a heck of a weak point then," Hunk moaned. "Whatever that thing's reaction was, my brain feels like it was hit with a speeder."

"WAIT," Pidge shouted. Both Hunk and Keith held their hands up and made loud shushing noises. Pidge covered her mouth with her hands for a moment before speaking in an exaggeratedly loud whisper. "Are you trying to tell me that Lance took that thing out with just his bayard rifle?" The green paladin blinked at the pair, something like admiration dancing over her features. 

Hunk looked at Keith, who could only really answer by shrugging, since right now he didn't know for sure one way or the other. 

"Do you think he was knocked out by the pressure wave then?" Pidge asked.

"Maybe," Keith said, peering out of the ditch and looking around for nearby Galra that might have been drawn by Pidge's shouting. "We have to assume that's a distinct possibility. If he's unconscious or immobile, he shouldn't be too far back along the path and we'll need to find him before the Galra do. If he's conscious, he'd better be heading this way. Hunk, how are you doing?"

"I'm terrified, kind of nauseous, and my back still stings from the last bolt of electricity. But my headache is slowly going down and I don't think anything's cut or broken, so... I'm doing better than expected." Hunk responded, offering a small smile. As annoying it could be sometimes, Keith found himself appreciating Hunk's honesty.

"Pidge?" Keith prompted. 

Pidge blinked at him."I'm a bit bruised maybe, but not hurt. There's this really loud roaring noise in my ears, though, like an ocean wave crashing into a cave, mixed with a tiger, but really loud." Pidge stage-whispered. 

"Tinnitus?" Hunk asked. 

Pidge shook her head."I don't think so," she said, managing to sound completely unimpressed despite speaking entirely in whisper. "Tinnitus is supposed to sound like bells or a high-pitched whine."

"Okay. I'll head back towards the remains of the lab and see if I can find Lance. You two find a place to hole up and wait for us."

Hunk nodded despite wearing a disapproving frown. "We'll try to find somewhere with a bit of elevation in case you need cover fire," he offered. 

Keith nodded in appreciation.

"You shouldn't be going alone," Pidge hissed.

"No," Keith agreed, "but Hunk's not built for stealth and you can't hear properly right now. So this is what we're left with." He spoke with more bite than he'd intended before forcing himself to take a breath and calm down. Now was not the time to get into another fight. They would be having words about her not following his commands or trusting him as leader, but it could wait until he was more confident that it wouldn't devolve into a screaming match.

Besides, right now he was more angry at Lance.

"Okay." Keith stood, jumping easily up the side of the ditch before turning back to offer Pidge and Hunk a hand. "Find somewhere between here and the Lions. I'll radio you when I get Lance."

"Roger," Pidge responded, climbing after him easily. Hunk gave him a shaky salute before beginning to pick his way carefully up the steep and slightly crumbling slope. 

Keith stayed just long enough to make sure that Hunk could get out before turning and making his way back through the scrub, moving as quickly and quietly as he could. 

It still felt like the trip back towards the base was impossibly slow. The scrub was already heavy with undergrowth, low and untended, but several branches had been knocked off of the trees by the pressure wave. To make things worse, the ground was littered with loose dirt and leaves, making his footing unsteady under him when he tried to run or jump over anything.

Keith didn't meet Lance anywhere in the scrub.

The low trees and bushes gave way to the open, overgrown fields that the Galran Lab had been sitting in. Keith prowled carefully around the edges, looking for more cover before darting out from the relative safety of the thick bushes, keeping low and trying to duck between the ruined chunks of farm buildings, trees, and what had once been the outer walls of the Galran structure.

Now that he was no longer in the middle of avoiding the long-range fire of the electro-badger-bear, he had a chance to really look around at the devastation it had caused. The base was completely demolished, the outer walls peeled back like a giant fruit where the creature had broken through the armour. The monster itself lay slumped in the field, a large mass that would look almost completely inorganic if not for the vaguely animal shape it had. Several Galran vessels had landed near by, ranging in size from small deployment shuttles to much larger ships capable of spaceflight. 

Around the site of the battle, small patches of the ground still burned and even more patches of the dirt had been fused together into stone and glass by the heat and pressure of the lightning. The fields had been churned up and overturned by crashing vehicles and exploding rubble, and huge metal claws had raked deep gouges into the land. The soft, fern-like plants that had grown up throughout the fields were mostly flattened down or completely obliterated. Previously they had been thick enough for the Paladins to hide behind as they approached the base and tall enough to conceal the myriad of trip lines and mines they'd had to avoid on their approach. 

Added to all that, a scattering of Galra squads patrolled the blasted landscape. They appeared to be organising, starting the process of combing over the wrecked vessels, the remains of the base, and the body of the monster. 

Keith peered around a particularly large chunk of masonry he'd situated himself behind, switching his visor over to magnification and identification mode to scan over the field. Most of the ground troops were automatons, but there were plenty of flesh and blood Galra and the scientists were made up of several species, including Galra, directing their movements. They were all combing the area, but they didn't seem to have been at it long.

Keith didn't see Lance in the field.

He moved his focus towards the last place he remembered seeing Lance, just before Hunk had grabbed him. Standing on the melted ground was a Galra soldier in full armour, scanning over the dirt below him and looking outwards towards the scrub and the forested hills that lay beyond it. 

That wasn't a good sign - if he was looking out into the distance like that, he might suspect that the paladins had gone that way. They hadn't exactly tried to make a clean getaway, relying on the chaos of a war zone to cover their hurried retreat. Keith's adrenaline kicked up and he scanned the surrounding area and the path of their escape for any obvious signs that might tell a Galra where the team had gone. Thankfully, the pressure wave seemed to have smoothed over the traces of their escape. Finding footprints in the disturbed ground would be impossible, especially with broken ferns and branches everywhere. 

Which raised another point - Lance couldn't have gone that way. He wouldn't have been able to make a break for it until either just before or just after that wave had happened, meaning that either Keith should have seen him in the scrub, or there should be some sign of him moving over the soft dirt. Unless he'd gotten turned around and ran off in the wrong direction?

Keith's hope that it might be the latter was dashed almost immediately when he turned and happened to focus on one of the strangely-designed Galra/space/transport ships. Two Galra sentries marched in step, carrying Lance's slumped body carelessly between them as they ascended the walkway into the vessel, overseen by a thin Galra in light-coloured clothes. Keith's readouts told him that Lance was alive and unconscious, but there was no time for any further information before they disappeared onto the ship.

Panic prickled over Keith's skin like icy needles. He needed to get on that ship and get Lance before he lost track of the blue paladin, but there was an entire open field crawling with sentries and soldiers between him and his destination. Keith clenched his hands, stopping himself from racing out of cover. 

_Patience yields focus. Patience yields focus._

There was no way to make it there without being seen. He could get captured, but then he'd have to hope he ended up on the same ship that Lance was on _and_ he'd have to break them out from inside. He could probably fight his way over there through the few troops between him and the ship, but he'd be winging it on the escape. Unless he managed to steal one of the lighter spacecraft; he could probably pilot Galran ships - he could do most things with their technology, even if he didn't understand all the technical terms for things.

_Patience yields focus._

But Pidge and Hunk were in hiding, waiting for them. They needed to take the Lions back together.

The Red Paladin could have just run in without an escape plan. The Black Paladin could not. He needed...

_Patience._

The door to the ship that Lance had been dragged onto closed and Keith's panic changed from pricking his skin to piercing through him with burning cold spikes, right down to the bone. They were taking Lance away to who knows where, to do who knows what to him. And Keith - Keith couldn't just let him be taken away and tortured or killed. Or both. 

Keith couldn't let the Galra take anyone or anything else important to him, he couldn't do it. He _wouldn't_ do it. Nothing else mattered, nothing else registered over his dread.

Screw patience.

Keith's Bayard flared to life as he broke from his hiding place, keeping low to the ground to take advantage of what cover and plant life were still available, but he barely made it an eighth of the way to the ship containing Lance before he was spotted by a group of sentries who swooped in on his position like hunting hounds. Keith cut them down quickly, but not before they had sounded the alert.

With his shield raised under heavy fire and his blade cutting into anything that came too close, Keith managed to claw his way forward a little farther, only to have his progress halted by three Galra soldiers that had moved to engaged him. One took up a firing position while the largest of the three raced towards Keith with twin swords swinging, and the third arched around, moving to flank him. 

Keith cut them down in time to see even more sentries taking up a firing position and more Galra soldiers heading towards him. He felt his face twist into a smirk, the hum of battle thrumming through his veins and melting the icy shards of anxiety that had ran him through.

Until he heard the high-pitched hum of an engine powering up and looked over to see the strange ship taking off, taking Lance with it.

Keith screamed, nothing more than a raged battlecry of Lance's name, even as he forced himself to retreat. Every part of him wanted to go forwards, to _make_ them give Lance back.

Instead, Keith ran back towards the Lions, hoping desperately that Hunk had managed to find that higher ground he wanted.

* * *

Awareness returned to Lance all at once, like a switch had been flipped in his mind with no regard for the fact that he might like a little time to slowly come to grip with the change in his surroundings. One moment he was watching the Robeast fall, feeling that psychic smack in the face (Brain-face? Prefrontal Cortex? Which was more towards the front, the orbitofrontal or the frontopolar- No wait, none of that mattered. Brain-Face was fine.) knocking him down, and the next minute he re-awoke to full consciousness somewhere else.

Horrible, horrible consciousness.

He was in perfect darkness, not even enough light for his eyes to see by even after becoming used to the dark. Blinking a couple of times revealed no change, but it at least confirmed that he'd actually opened his eyes. Well, since that wasn't working, he tried to take stock of his surroundings through the use of his other senses instead.

Lance carefully moved his arms around, realising that there was no feeling of ground beneath him or walls around him. He was floating upright and his hands moved slowly through some sort of slight resistance, as though he were suspended in liquid. It didn't feel like his skin was cooled by it though, the way he might if he were submerged in water. Thinking about it, there didn't seem to be any strong temperature one way or the other - the surrounding liquid was perfectly... well, it felt like it was the exact same temperature as his skin, whatever temperature that was. Or maybe he was wearing a wetsuit or something to keep him warm?

Lance pulled his hands in towards himself, running them over his chest. He didn't encounter his paladin armour, instead finding a suit that didn't seem to have much give and was a completely different shape. He definitely had gloves on because he couldn't feel the texture of the suit at all. He thought there may be ridges or bumps on it, but only because his hand seemed to jump away and back a little when he ran it across the suit's surface. Otherwise, he could only tell he'd even touched himself by a combination of his own sense of his body's position and the resistance he met when he tried to move his arm further.

He moved his hands up towards his face, noting that his neck was also covered. His face was uncovered, however, and his cheeks told him that the texture of his suit was smooth, almost glass-like, but still thin and flexible enough for him to be able to move his hand without resistance.

Well, that was something. He could feel his face, and his face could feel whatever outfit the Galra had put him in. Did he have his underwear or paladin clothes on underneath this? Lance tried to mentally check, but it didn't feel like it. Oh God, had the Galra stripped him naked while he was unconscious, and then re-dressed him?

The thought sent a shiver down his spine. There was something fundamentally creepy about being stripped and re-dressed by an enemy while you were unconscious. Okay, Lance needed to think of something else. What other senses could he use to pick up some information?

Just as Lance thought of using scent, another realisation struck him - he was completely submerged and there was nothing covering his face. In a panic, he began gasping for air, drawing in more of the liquid around him as his body seized up, expecting to find itself drowning despite the fact that he hadn't drowned yet and he'd been breathing normally just a moment ago. That didn't stop him from twitching and thrashing, his legs colliding with some sort of thick cable or tether of some kind that extended from the backside of his suit like a tail and seemed to be firmly affixed to the floor of whatever chamber he was in.

It seemed like an eternity before his fear subsided enough for him to think rationally. He wasn't drowning. He could breathe in and out. He couldn't smell anything or taste anything, his eyes didn't hurt, his nose didn't hurt, and while every breath was slightly harder than it would have been normally, his lungs didn't hurt. Whatever he was in, it was breathable and buoyant, enough that his captors had to tether him down to stop him from floating away.

Finally, Lance tried to focus on his ears, pouring all his concentration into trying to pick up on even the slightest sound. The first thing he managed to identify was the rhythmic "ba-thump" of his own heartbeat echoing through the liquid, loud and fast after his recent panic. But even when he finally calmed that down to something that was more bearable, he couldn't hear anything from outside.

All he could hear was his own body. All he could feel was himself. There was nothing in here except...

Himself.

Terror and hysterical laughter welled up inside of him, but when he opened his mouth the liquid around him rushed in, muffling the sounds before he had a chance to utter them.

He had no choice. He could only wait to find out what the Galra had planned for him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> After a mission gone bad, Lance manages to snipe an enormous Robeast in it's hidden weakspot. Unfortunately, Keith had been against letting him take the shot, so Lance had tricked Hunk into stealing Keith away. This left the blue paladin alone and vunerable when he was knocked out in the resulting blast. Keith raced back to the battlefield, only to see Lance being loaded onto a strange ship.
> 
> Meanwhile, Lance awakens in total darkness, suspended in a strange liquid...

It had been over a quintant since Lance had vanished onto that ship.

Keith was pacing. He knew perfectly well that he was pacing, but he couldn't help himself. Over a quintant. That was... some large number of hours. Keith wasn't sure exactly how many, but he was certain that Lance had been in Galran hands for probably twenty-four hours by now.

Pidge muttered under her breath as she worked at a computer, fingers flying over the keys despite the lethargy in the rest of her movements. She needed to sleep soon. They would all need to sleep soon and Keith wasn't sure how he was going to manage to convince anyone to do that. Hunk and Pidge were the kind of people who couldn't turn their brains off long enough to go to sleep if they were filled with worries and stress.They'd all been awake almost thirty hours now, and it had been over twenty-four hours since the team had been forced to retreat.

Since Keith had run into the scrub, leaping and ducking his way through the tangle of branches as the sentries struggled to follow.

Since Hunk had spotted Keith with a few determined soldiers on his tail and showed everyone that when it came to an open field, the man on a hill with a machine gun is king.

Since Pidge had landed her Lion right behind Hunk and left a wall of solid wood and thrashing tendrils of greenery between them and any Galra that might have decided to give chase on foot.

Since Keith had radioed ahead to tell Allura that Lance had been taken.

Over a day and they had no idea where Lance was.

Keith had tried to describe the ship that Lance had been thrown into, but Allura couldn't find anything even close to matching amidst the masses of spacecraft that were converging on their position. Keith had searched the surrounding space, hoping to spot the ship out there somewhere, hoping to intercept it before Lance could be delivered anywhere. He couldn't find it.

Once the three remaining paladins had returned to the Castle, Keith had been all for going right back out and tearing through every single ship until they found Lance. Strangely enough, given that the idea involved running directly into danger with no plan whatsoever, Hunk had immediately backed him up with Pidge only moments behind.

It was probably a good thing that Allura had pointed out that Lance could have been put on any one of the larger ships or that he could still be on one of the smaller ships waiting to be placed on an actual prison ship. They had no idea where to even begin looking, the search would take a long time during which many of the ships would either attack them or leave before they could check inside them, and if Lance were in a smaller ship he might get hurt.

Keith could admit that he hadn't been thinking straight, too full of impotent anger and left-over adrenaline from the fight. He had known all of those things Allura said, but actually hearing them explained helped him focus and calm down enough not to jump right back into his Lion and tear apart the Galra fleet. 

Back in the present, a gentle hand on his shoulder signaled Allura's arrival and halted Keith's pacing. He turned to face her, noting the dejection in her body language.

Still, she gave Keith a determined smile. "We will find him," she insisted.

Keith suspected that the words were more for herself than for him. Allura already blamed herself for Shiro's disappearance, feeling like she'd pushed him too far or in the wrong direction, or maybe not far enough. As though she'd somehow driven him into vanishing from his Lion. To lose another paladin so soon after when she'd already lost so much... There was nothing Keith could say in the face of that loss, so he only nodded in response before turning to Pidge.

"I swear, on all that is holy, if you ask me if I 'have anything yet' one more time I will garrote you with a cable and stuff you into a wall panel," Pidge growled.

Allura gasped lightly and made to step forwards, but Keith's hand on her arm stopped her before she could tell the green paladin off. Keith didn't speak, continuing to watch Pidge with as blank of an expression as he could manage. Much like the last seven times he'd very deliberately not asked her anything, Pidge broke.

"Alright, fine!" Pidge shouted, throwing her arms up. "I CAN'T FIND ANYTHING! I've tried everything, I've even built a damn matrix of every possible variable I can think of so that I could run through all possible iterations on them coming up in any of these, and... nothing." She visibly deflated, pulling her glasses off. "I've grabbed every communication I have access too, even old logs. I've run them through the decryption keys we got from the Blade of Marmora. Anything that didn't crack under that, I've run through my own decryptions. I can't find anything."

Keith took a careful breath. Pidge had come up with the idea of sneaking onto the Galra ships with the most communication traffic and planting a program to create a copy of those transmissions, sending them to the Castle. The thought had been that if Lance was a prisoner, surely he'd have to be processed. There should be records somewhere, maybe even someone telling the Generals that seemed to be running the empire in Zarkon's absence that a Paladin had been captured. It was a risky idea. The Galra could trace the signal to them, and it hadn't been the most elegant or clean of missions in the first place. Plus, Pidge was positive that the program wouldn't last more than a day or two before their security caught it and purged it. 

It had gotten the job done though, and the Castle had begun receiving copies of all communications travelling between their targets and any other ships shortly after. Pidge had been confident that they'd know which ship Lance was on as soon as someone reported a paladin prisoner.

That was... fifteen vargas ago? Maybe seventeen? Coran had scanned for approaching vessels and decided which systems to divert power from in favour of cracking the messages, Hunk had tried to boost their equipment, Allura had kept the castle hidden behind a moon. And Keith... paced back and forth. If Pidge hadn't found anything by now, then they were back to square one - no idea where the ship that Lance had been taken away on had gone, and no idea which ship he was even in.

"We'll try some of the other ships then," Keith said, "plant another device and start monitoring that too." He placed a hand on his hips, clenching his fingers for a moment before forcing himself to calm down. "Maybe they're sending reports using a different method?"

Pidge tilted her head towards him, still deflated but at least curious about what he had to say. Which was problematic, because Keith had absolutely no idea how to follow that up. There was a reason Pidge was the communications expert and not Keith. 

Hunk happened to look over at him from where he was adjusting some machine or other and Keith tried to project 'Please help me, I have no idea what I'm talking about' as loudly as he possibly could in Hunk's direction.

There was a moment of awkward silence while Hunk blinked owlishly at him. "Like... a paper report?" Hunk asked and Keith shrugged. "Could they be using a short range communication that we can't intercept from this distance?" 

"Even with the interceptor? Maybe if it's not a text based or sound based communication," Pidge chimed in, looking thoughtfully at her screen. "Like, if they connect to a centralised system and fill in a form on that, then send the data in discrete chunks..."

Oh thank God. Keith breathed out a sigh as Pidge bought Coran up onto a view screen to discuss how forms might be passed through the Galran fleet. Keith understood almost nothing that they said, but they seemed to have an idea going when Hunk began to steer the conversation towards the next best place to steal information from.

Allura squeezed his arm encouragingly before joining the conversation as best she could. Keith figured that the best thing he could do was be far, far away from it.

They would find Lance, Keith was sure of it. He just hoped it was sooner rather than later.

* * *

Lance wasn't hungry any more.

He'd been ravenous for a while, to the point where the hunger was about all he could think about, but that faded remarkably fast despite no one coming to give him food. He couldn't really feel anything else, so fixating on the emptiness of his stomach had been far too easy. Before that, he'd been fixated on the sound of his own heartbeat, the metronomic "Ba-thump" noise infuriating him. He had no idea how long he'd been in this place. Maybe it was only a couple of hours, maybe it was days.

It felt like days.

No one had come for him. No one asked him any questions. Nothing changed. He was just left suspended in the darkness, waiting for something, _anything_ to happen.

Anything to stop him from thinking.

There was no music now to drown out the vicious thoughts that coiled through his mind like eels. No hunger to fixate on in place of those whispers. He was trapped in here with the voices in his head, the ones that knew him inside and out and wouldn't listen to his deflections and excuses and lies.

There wasn't anything to do but listen to them.

_'This is your own fault, after all.'_ he thought, his mental voice a harsh whisper in the silence. 

Maybe it was partly his fault, but if Keith had just let him shoot, he wouldn't have been alone when he fainted-

_'Don't try that on now. You're the idiot who bought this on yourself, trying to be the damn hero.'_ his thoughts continued. They were starting to sound like Keith as his mind created phantom sound for him to listen to.

Was that all it was? He just wanted to be the hero for once? He'd wanted to prove that he was useful, hadn't he?

_'You only proved that you're useless. Worse than useless - you actively make things worse. What made you think, even for a second, that you could do anything right?'_ His inner voice shifted tone, taking on Allura's haughty accent.

Lance didn't know. Why had he thought he could do something right?

_'Haven't you been paying attention to, oh, I don't know, your whole damn life?'_

Shooting was all he was good at. He wasn't as good a pilot or as good a fighter as the others. He wasn't smart, or likable, or funny. All he could do was shoot. And he'd gone and gotten himself captured because he was so pathetically desperate to prove that the one thing he could do was worth doing.

_'You deserve anything that happens to you here.'_

He deserved everything that happened to him here. Whatever they did to him, he bought it on himself.

_'Pathetic.'_ He'd heard Pidge spit that word at him before - his brain didn't even have to try very hard to imagine her voice.

He certainly felt pathetic. Nothing had happened, and yet he was so damned terrified.

_'Maybe they'll leave you here to die,'_ his thoughts said, sounding panicked, their lift and dip mimicking the way that Hunk spoke as he freaked out _'They won't feed you and you'll just wither away until you're dead. Maybe this liquid is supposed to preserve your body, like a specimen in a jar.'_

And that... That didn't make sense. Surely they'd interrogate him, try to find out what he knew? Or try to ransom him, or execute him for show... 

_'Even to the Galra you're worthless. Not even worth interrogating or killing. Why waste the energy on you?'_ Coran's voice said, like a knife through his heart. 

He was scaring himself now, he needed to stop. Except that he'd lost all control of his thoughts some time ago. There were no external distractions and he'd run out of internal ones. Besides, he couldn't help thinking that maybe if they moved him somewhere or took him out he could find a way to escape. 

Otherwise, he'd have to wait for Voltron to find and rescue him. 

_'You deserve this. They won't come for you. They'll look, for a while. But you'll be written off before too long.'_ His own voice slipped back in, dominating the conversation. 

They would come for him. Even if they didn't like him, they were Paladins of Voltron. They had to find him, it's what Voltron did - helping people was the core tenet of Voltron. 

_'That sentiment is hollow and you know it. It's been dying for a while now.'_ Shiro's tones, voice soft in a way that it had never been when Shiro spoke to him - no exasperation, no stern disapproval. No fleeting, rare, precious touch of praise. 

Voltron had no choice, Lance tried to tell himself. They were running out of paladins and they couldn't risk losing another one so soon. And they helped people. 

_'Even Shiro can be replaced. Replacing you would be easy - probably better for the team, in the long run. They still need to fill the Red Paladin's spot too, and it'll be easier without you ruining it. They could find someone better than you almost anywhere. Even if they do rescue you, you'll probably have been replaced already.'_ His own voice, but the accent... he was speaking the way Coran spoke, careless and light, the way he delivered all bad news. An imitation. 

Lance focused on the hurt his thoughts caused, trying to curl his body protectively around them as far as he could. It cut deep, the pain so deep in his core that he felt like he needed to be bigger on the inside to hold it all. But it _was_ contained, and it was something that he could control here. 

It was something. A feeling, something besides the complete, numb nothingness. 

_'I deserve this.'_

* * *

Lance had been missing for over two quintants. Coran had forced everyone to take a nap before breaking into any other ships but Keith hadn't been willing to lie down for more than an hour since then.

Pidge had slept after the mission and woken up confident and ready to find Lance but the last time Keith had seen her, she was staring tiredly at a computer screen with Allura sitting next to her, so close that they were touching from hip to shoulder. There was still a bit of forced determination in her voice as she talked quietly to Allura. "What am I missing? Could he have been taken out of the quadrant? Back to the planet?" 

Resting against the princess was the most comfortable Pidge had looked for a while and Keith didn't have it in him to interrupt them. Allura had told him how much she wanted to be Pidge's friend and how she felt like that want clashed with her appointed role as their guardian and commander. Keith wasn't going to butt into their time when it looked like they were finally becoming closer.

Instead, he turned his focus on finding Hunk. The yellow paladin desperately needed sleep but if past experience was anything to go by he was more likely to be baking something ridiculous in the kitchen instead of actually resting.

Keith could sleep once he knew Hunk was sleeping.

The Kitchen was empty, as was Hunk's usual workroom, and for a glorious moment Keith thought that Hunk might have actually listened to him and gone to bed. He was already mentally returning to his own bed when he heard a noise, like someone choking or retching, coming from Hunk's room.

Keith was through the door before he even fully registered the sound.

Hunk's room was cold, lights on full but the heating off. Keith scanned the room, looking for the source of the sound before a deep, choked gasp reached his ears and propelled him towards the back of the room and into the attached bathroom.

_Hunk!_

Keith slid to a stop, eyes taking the room in until he picked out Hunk's form sitting on the floor beside the toilet bowl, hands on the back of his head and forehead rested on his knees as he panted in short, shallow breaths.

Keith couldn't understand how someone with so much physical presence, such a big heart and personality, could make himself look so small.

"Hunk?" Keith asked, trying to alert the man to his presence. Hunk either didn't hear or ignored him, continuing to breathe too fast.

Keith stepped into the room fully, crossing the small distance to rest a hand on the back of Hunk's neck. Hunk flinched under him and looked up, the expression of almost comical surprise tempered by bloodshot and blurred eyes, as though he hadn't heard Keith approaching at all.

It felt like Hunk was shaking under his hand.

The strange, tense moment between them was broken when Hunk turned his head sideways to heave into the toilet, the sound little more than a choked retching as nothing but saliva came out.

"Hunk!" Keith exclaimed, sharper than he'd intended to. He blamed the fear for that. "Quiznack... I'll uh- I'll go get Coran and we'll get you to medical." 

Hunk made a choked, distressed sound and grabbed at his throat for a moment before shaking his head.

"No? What 'No', why not? Hunk, you're throwing up! In a non-standard throwing up situation!" Keith pointed out, unnaturally shrill in the small room. So maybe he was panicking a little bit. 

Hunk wheezed, as though he couldn't get enough air into his lungs to properly reply, and began rubbing his hands on his legs.

"And you're not breathing properly!" Keith went on. Hunk shook his head again and reached into his pocket, pulling out-

His wallet?

Hunk fumbled around within the wallet for a moment before handing Keith an old piece of paper, well creased and worn smooth. Keith blinked at it dumbly for a few seconds before opening it.

_'Hello!'_ it began, in Hunk's thick, bold handwriting. Hunk always wrote carefully, like he was trying not to smudge the words on the page.

Keith looked back up to Hunk again before turning back to the letter.

_'If you're reading this, I'm having a non-verbal freak out. They're not very common for me, so even if we're friends, you might not have seen one before._

_If we're not friends, my name is Hunk and it's nice to meet you.'_

Keith found himself smiling, despite the confusion and alarm that still swirled around his head. Perhaps he was hysterical?

_If I'm panicking so badly that I can't reply, there are some things that I know will help me calm down._

_If you can, please remind me to breathe regularly._

_It's OK to touch me, but if you don't want to, that's also fine._

_If I have my phone on me, give it to me. I might have forgotten it. If not, if you can say something rhythmical and slow, this helps a lot. Something like reciting multiplication tables._

Beneath Hunk's handwriting was a second, far more messy script. Keith read the first few words before realising that it had to be Lance's handwriting.

_What works best is letting Hunk hear or feel a heartbeat. He's got one of those programs on his phone that plays one, but he might not know where his phone is. If you're comfortable with it, let him rest a thumb on your wrist and talk steadily to him. Tell him to take deep breaths and breathe with him. That will work fastest._

_Make sure you've got my Bro's back._

Keith blinked at the page as comprehension dawned. Hunk was having a panic attack. 

Keith could have kicked himself for not figuring it out immediately. Of course Hunk was freaking out, he'd been running almost non-stop for days and his best friend was missing. Hunk had always been so solid and dependable that Keith hadn't even thought about how worn down and on edge he must have been.

After Shiro's disappearance, Keith had sunk into his new role as the leader of Voltron. That purpose let him focus on the fight, dedicate himself to something he believed was good, and ignore the confusing, complex cluster of emotions that occasionally hummed through him like swarms of insects. His own breakdown had come upon him suddenly, without him even noticing it's approach. He'd stepped into Shiro's room for the first time since the black paladin's disappearance and couldn't even remember why he had done so. Looking for some clue about what had happened, perhaps? It didn't really matter.

Hunk had been there, folding clothes and bedding from the laundry. He'd stopped when Keith had come in.

"Oh. Uh, sorry, man. I'll get out of your way." Hunk had said, placing the sheets he'd been folding on Shiro's bed.

Keith didn't even remember what he'd said. Some nonsense about Hunk having as much right to be there as anyone else did. But Hunk had shaken his head.

"I didn't... I don't know him as well as you do." Hunk had looked down at the neatly folded sheets on the bed. Keith remembered becoming fixated on the way his hands worried over each other before he spoke again. "We all admire Shiro, but he kind of seemed to hold himself separate from... some of us. I mean, he isn't a link to my family, like he is for Pidge. He isn't my idol and... isn't my idol like he is for Lance." Hunk had turned to Keith with the kindest smile. "And I know that you and Shiro are really close. He was always looking out for you and mentoring you, after all. But for me..." Hunk looked down at his hands, forcibly stopping their movement. "He's just a friend and a kind person that I don't know as well as I should."

Keith had no idea what had happened next. His body burned, his vision blurred; Hunk became an indistinct, yellow blob and those emotional insects that had been squirming through him spun into a feeding frenzy in his blood.

The next thing he was really aware of, was being curled up in Hunk's lap, face pressed into the yellow paladin's neck as he shook and cursed between sobs.

Keith couldn't remember the last time he had cried before that. It must have been when he'd been told that Shiro had died on Kerberos.

But he wasn't crying because he'd lost his brother - his family - yet again.

He was crying because he was so damned angry at the Galra, Zarkon, and the universe at large. Normally it was more focused, but for a moment it felt like it was burning out of his control, so all-consuming that he was sure that if he didn't douse it somehow he'd be consumed by it. The universe was so stupidly unfair. Keith had been happy out here, fighting for a purpose and knowing with certainty what he should be doing. Despite everything, this was where Keith felt like he should be, with the people that he felt like he belonged with. 

So why did he have to lose Shiro to have that? Why did Shiro have to pay for Keith to finally have somewhere he really belonged? Why not Keith? Shiro didn't deserve what the universe had done to him. 

Hunk should be able to get to know Shiro as well as he wanted. Keith didn't feel like he'd known Shiro as well as he should have either, otherwise he might know why the black paladin had vanished and he might be able to bring Shiro back. Keith hadn't been ready to step up and become the leader of Voltron.

Hunk had just held him close, rocking back and forth slightly and ignoring the fact that Keith was digging his fingers into his shoulders tight enough that Keith would still find bruises there a week later. He just weathered the storm until Keith's tears evaporated and his shaking finally subsided enough for him to unclench his hands, apologise, and wish for a siren to hurry up and sound so that he could quickly leave and forget his embarrassment.

There had been no sirens and Hunk wouldn't accept any apology. He hadn't even moved to get Keith off his lap when Keith had felt like he just wanted to slide onto the floor and fall asleep. Instead, Hunk encouraged him to cry when he needed to, offered company with no conversation if that's what he needed, and to make food at any time of the day.

Setting his shoulders, Keith sat down in front of the yellow paladin and carefully took his hand, determined to do things right. What Keith was doing now was nowhere near enough to make them even, but friendship wasn't a system that kept tallies. Hunk had helped him when he felt weak. He could return at least some of the support that Hunk had given him. And this he could do - just follow the instructions that the letter gave him.

He picked up Hunk's right hand carefully, waiting a beat to see if Hunk pulled away. The letter said touching was okay, but Keith didn't want to assume anything.

Hunk was still panting, breathing in short gasps and hiccups.

"Okay, I understand." Keith spoke quietly, pitching his voice lower. "I want you to breathe with me, okay?"

Hunk blinked at him and nodded. With a smile that he hoped was comforting and not anywhere near as awkward as it felt, Keith placed the yellow paladin's right hand over his heart. It was probably beating a little fast, but at least it was steady. 

Hunk stared at it, apparently forgetting to breathe all together.

"Okay, take a breath with me. Breathe in-" Keith demonstrated by taking in an exaggeratedly large breath. Hunk made a short, distressed noise before copying him raggedly. "- And out."

Hunk copied him again and Keith set up a steady pattern. He could do this. He had nice, clear instructions that he could follow and know he was doing the right thing. He could believe that his presence and heartbeat were enough to help.

_Ba-thump._

"Breathe in-"

Inhale.

_Ba-thump._

_Ba-thump._

"-Breathe out."

Exhale.

Slowly, Hunk relaxed in front of Keith, unravelling from his tightly-wound ball to something more recognisably the big man Keith expected. He found himself relaxing as well, eyes growing heavy with the weight of the past couple of days.

It was peaceful to have a moment where the only thing he had to do was breathe and exist. He'd had that in the desert and he'd felt it sometimes while training, but this was the first time he'd felt like he could have it with another person around.

"Thanks," Hunk said, voice a little roughened and slurred. His palm twitched against Keith's chest, but he didn't move it. "How did you know about this?"

Keith felt confusion intrude on the almost sleepy haze he'd fallen into and mentally shook himself back to the present. "I heard you throwing up. You left your door open."

"No no, not that." Hunk shook his head before picking up Keith's free hand and putting it against his chest. "I meant this. The heartbeat thing." He let Keith's hand go and Keith pulled it back into his lap.

"Oh." Keith looked absently at his hand. Was this weird? He was sitting next to the toilet in Hunk's bathroom holding one of Hunk's hands up against his chest. He wasn't used to touching anyone so it did feel a little weird, but was it weird for normal people? "Lance wrote on your letter than a heartbeat would help. So I thought this would be more direct," he explained, sounding more unsure than he would have liked.

Hunk huffed under his breath and leaned forwards, slumping with exhaustion. "Of course." He shook his head before looking back up to meet Keith's eyes, a tired, trembling smile starting to show on his face. "This is exactly what Lance did when I had my last... uh, episode." He looked at his hand, and Keith found himself following Hunk's gaze to where the other man's large, warm hand was still pressed against his heart. "I hadn't slept enough then either. I'm not... normally like this," Hunk said, apologetic even as his words slurred into each other. "Normally I eat or spend time in the kitchen and I feel much more calm, but Coran's been cleaning everything, and I-"

"It's okay," Keith interrupted before Hunk could go off on too much of a ramble. "You don't have to explain or apologise."

Hunk gave him a grateful look as he slowly began to list to the side.

"Come on." Keith let go of Hunk's hand, letting it fall into the other man's lap. "You can't sleep here."

"I can though," Hunk protested, "I've slept in much less comfortable places."

"I'm not letting you sleep next to the toilet," Keith said insistently, even as the idea of not moving at all had a certain appeal.

No. No, he was not falling asleep in Hunk's bathroom.

"Come on." Keith pulled himself upright and tugged on Hunk's shoulder. "Brush your teeth and sleep in bed."

Hunk pulled a face. "Okay, that's fair enough."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, so far in my Shance story there's more Heith subtext than Shance ^^;; I'm not sure it's enough for a tag though.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> Lance is still missing, taken by the Galra. Allura, Coran and the remaining three paladins are searching desperately for him, but they have nothing to go on and no clues on where to begin. Keith tries his best to take care of his team, especially when the stress reaches a tipping point for Hunk, triggering a panic attack.
> 
> Meanwhile, Lance is left completely alone, with only his own thoughts for company.

Thoughts were hard to grasp. They slipped out through the holes in Lance's mind, swimming in the liquid around him before fluttering out of existence.

No one had come. He hadn't been taken anywhere. He hadn't seen anyone.

He wanted to tear out his hair and rip his skin off, but the suit prevented him. 

Instead, he moved. He threw punches into the liquid in front of him. He had been counting, once. But numbers didn't make sense, and they tended to turn into noodles or string and leak out through his teeth.

The rhythm of the exercise was good though. The liquid provided resistance and Lance was almost pathologically aware of every muscle in his body. He could focus in on each one individually, one by one. Feel how they moved in isolation, how he could move hard and fast without using most of them.

He could kick too. He had no balance, which meant he could stretch and kick with only the water to resist him. The muscles in his legs were long, Lance thought.

Things tended to change size. Parts of him were smaller or larger than they were a moment ago. He couldn't see his body to calibrate. Was he bloated up, like waterlogged bodies were in those crime shows?

Lance could focus in on each muscle individually, one by one. The muscles in his legs were long. The bones were long until they weren't.

Moving and focusing on his muscles kept his eyes from doing things. 

He saw things in the dark. Teeth. Burning fish. Crackles of electricity. Many-sided shapes.

Teeth. So many teeth. 

Spiders with mustaches in webs of sinew and lightning. Spiders made of teeth, with teeth for legs and an abdomen like a heart.

The lightning pulsed to the ever-present ‘ba-thump' of his insides. Like the purple and blue that his eyes painted across his vision. 

Purple and blue on the birds that swam around.

His veins moved the liquid around sluggishly. He could feel the slow drag of it inside his circulatory system, thick and gritty as silt.

He could hear it scraping against the walls of his body.

His nerves fired. Teeth along his skin, his spine. Tap-tapping on long legs. Small creatures inside his nerves, flicking and falling.

Familiar voices, saying words that had no meaning.

Indigo laughter.

Teeth.

He threw punches into the liquid in front of him. He had been counting, once. But numbers didn't make sense. They had too many legs and wore the wrong mustaches. The rhythm of the exercise was good though. The liquid provided resistance, and Lance was almost ethereally aware of every muscle in his body.

* * *

The room Keith found Pidge in was dark, lit only by the glow of the laptop screen and some blinking LEDs. Keith had been expecting this, despite ordering everyone to get some sleep. It was why he was still prowling around the ship.

"I thought I told you to go to bed," Keith called into the room, walking carefully over the snare of cords connecting all the devices in the room. Pidge was hunched in the middle of the network like a spider in a web. She didn't turn around or acknowledge that Keith had even entered the room. Perhaps she had headphones on? He walked carefully around to make sure he didn't sneak up behind Pidge and instead approached her from the side.

Her headphones lay loose around her neck as she stared at the screen in front of her, eyes shining in the monitor's light.

"Pidge?" Keith asked tentatively, hoping against hope that Pidge wasn't crying. He had no idea what to do with crying people. Comforting people was what Hunk or Lance did.

Since Shiro's disappearance, Keith had come to understand exactly how important the legs of Voltron were. Without the head and the body there was no center to hold the team together. Keith was trying to be that center, but he could admit to himself that neither of the arms of Voltron - himself or Pidge - had taken Shiro's loss well.

That's when Lance and Hunk had stepped in. Keith might have fallen in on himself if Hunk hadn't been there to hold him up, hold him together, and offer him things Keith hadn't even thought he might need but found himself so desperately grateful for.

Lance would chase Keith out of the training room when he was in danger of running himself to the point of exhaustion and offered to listen to him if he ever needed to talk, but he still pushed back against Keith's decisions, still argued, was still so very... Lance. Keith was kind of disappointed that they hadn't become closer, the way that he felt like he had with Hunk. But really, Lance was there for Pidge. When Pidge had retreated, Lance was the one who bought her food and guided her back to the group. When she got angry or frustrated at the universe, Lance was there to endure her rants until she broke down, anger burned out and giving way to apologies and exhaustion. When Pidge was sad or crying, Lance was the one that was there for her.

Lance wasn't here now. He hadn't been here for five days. 

They'd looked, they spent every free second looking. Even the computers Pidge had set up to run possible scenarios for what had happened to Shiro had been re-purposed to scanning Galran reports and monitoring the blue lion for signs that her paladin was near. Everyone was trying desperately to work out where Lance was. They'd even taken a gamble and broken onto some of the largest ships around to see if he was in the prisons there, only to come up with a few Galran political prisoners and a couple of local aliens.

None had seen Lance.

"It was me." Pidge spoke, voice low and timid, interrupting Keith's half-panicked introspection. 

Keith blinked at her, the dread of being alone with someone on the verge of tears burning away immediately. "What do you mean?" he asked as gently as he could manage. He stepped over the cables to reach Pidge, sitting himself next to her, but far enough away that they weren't touching.

"When I broke into the system, just before that... that creature broke free... I thought I was breaking the security protocols for their computer system," Pidge said, scrolling through her laptop's screen. 

Keith couldn't help but frown at her. "Pidge, are you going over the Hyrito Lab mission again?"

"But they weren't security protocols for the computer system," Pidge barreled on, completely ignoring him. "They were for the Robeast - Psychic dampeners, motor function suppressors and the Trans-Neural-Psychic Barrier. And I turned them all off."

Keith studied her, barely understanding a word she was saying. She clearly hadn't found anything good - there was no excitement in her actions. Instead, she seemed drained of all life.

"Keith, I messed up. I let the Robeast out and... and now Lance is captured and might be dead." Pidge's voice hitched, as though even the word hurt. "And it's because I wasn't paying enough attention. It was my fault."

"No! No, of course it wasn't!" Keith reached forwards to place a hand on Pidge's shoulder. "You made a mistake, but it's not your fault. The Galran empire built the Robeast. So even if you let it out, even if Lance is the one who shot it, it's the Galran empire that captured him. It's the Galra that are responsible," Keith said, a weary sort of anger bubbling up inside him for a moment before sinking back down to the pit of his stomach.

He had to believe that. It wasn't Pidge's fault for letting the Robeast out.

And he had to believe it wasn't his own fault, either.

He blamed the Galran empire most and placed whatever was left on Lance. Lance had behaved recklessly, the way Keith admitted that he might have done once upon a time. The hurt he saw in everyone here was because of Lance's actions. They'd find him and scream at him to never do this to them again and then never let him out of their sights.

"Am I a bad person?" Pidge asked, voice small and scared. 

It wrapped around Keith's heart like the jaws of a mountain lion, crushing down on it until he felt like it should be split by the force. "No! No, of course not!" Keith asserted quickly, no hesitation. "Why would you think that?"

Pidge closed her eyes, the tears that had been pooling finally escaping to slide down her cheeks. "I said... I said some really nasty things to Lance. Before he got... I was angry. The sims, they'd all come up empty again. Allura had - she came to me and called me out for being obsessed, for focusing too hard on Shiro when I needed to focus on the people that remained. It was like... She talked about him like he was dead! And I was furious."

Keith nodded his head, partly to show he was listening, partly to show that he understood. While Keith had poured his energy into becoming calm and focused, Pidge had started to lash out at times. It hurt Keith to see her so angry, even as he understood that anger completely. He'd lived through it himself several times, including the last time Shiro had gone missing. 

Keith tried to direct that anger like a focused blade, a single point of heat. Pidge directed her anger like a wounded animal, lashing out at anything that came close.

Pidge continued. "I was just thinking - 'How dare she? How can she just give up on Shiro like that? Doesn't she see how hard I'm trying to get him back?' And Lance... Lance was there. Because I'd missed lunch. He had food and I just... I was so angry." Pidge began sobbing in earnest. "I wanted to yell at Allura, but Lance wouldn't let me. He kept getting in the way and I snapped at him. I said he was always in the way. I said- I said I wished he was the one gone, not Shiro."

Keith couldn't stop himself from sucking in a breath at that. 

Pidge scrubbed at her face, expression twisted into something foreign and bitter. "Allura told me off, and I... I said the same thing to her. That I wished that she was gone, and not Shiro. And she- she said-" Pidge paused, sucking in a breath to get the words out before breaking down. "She said she wished that she'd been the one taken too. And I felt... I felt so _awful_. I apologised immediately, told her I didn't mean it and we cried and hugged and stuff but- but I never-" She turned towards Keith completely, eyes wide and voice raised, begging him to understand. "Keith, I never apologised to _Lance_. I never told him I didn't mean it, I never took it back, and now... Now he's gone, and it's my fault!"

Keith was sure he must have looked ridiculous, slack jawed and panicked in the face of Pidge's anguish. Dammit, where was Hunk? What would Hunk do? What would Lance have done? He needed to fix this, there had to be something that he could do that would-

Pidge launched herself towards him, wrapping her arms around his chest. Oh - of course. Why hadn't he thought of that? Keith enveloped Pidge in his arms, putting his whole body into the hug. Damp patches soaked into his shirt almost immediately.

"Lance is like a brother to me," Pidge gasped against him, shoulders shaking with sobs. "Why does the universe keep taking away my brothers? Matt, Shiro, Lance- What did I do?"

Keith honestly couldn't answer. The only thing he could think of to do was rub a hand up and down Pidge's back and pet the back of her head, the way he'd seen Lance do.

"We will find him," Keith promised.

* * *

Lance had no idea how long they had been there. They had trouble telling whether they were asleep or awake. Sometimes they had trouble remembering their name.

He had been wrong about the liquid he lived in having no taste. It tasted like old blood. He didn't realise until he'd bitten his tongue hard enough to bleed and compared the two.

Words swam to the front of their minds, jagged and disjointed.

They were...

Forgotten.

Worthless.

Hopeless.

Useless.

Unwanted.

Unneeded.

Uncaring.

He broke the words down into parts whenever he was together enough to remember what words were. When _he_ was not _they_. Un- words meant the opposite of what they said. -Less words meant without what they said.

Lost was 'unfound'. Unfounded?

Dead. 'Unalive' or 'aliveless'? Was it the opposite, or the absence?

Was dark 'unlight' or 'lightless'? Lance couldn't remember. It was always dark anyway, that's why colours danced around them in swirls and sharp shapes that coalesced into pristine white teeth and long legs.

An endless river of stars unfolded around them, hanging in the liquid black. The stars died, or blinked like a thousand spiders' eyes in a hollow web. Ghost fire flickered at the edges of his vision, sometimes swimming into focus. They could reach forwards and touch it, so long as he told all his muscles not to move when they did. If he moved his body, they wouldn't get anywhere.

His body couldn't go anywhere anyway.

Things appeared before them in the stars. Some were pasted together as Lance's brain tried desperately to shape the darkness into something, anything that he could understand. 

Wide smiles full of glittering teeth. 

Some were specific people, sharp recollections of Lions and Humans and Alteans. Lance hadn't been able to touch them and they faded as soon as all of Lance focused on them. Some were creatures Lance had never seen. Strange creatures in pale clothes and precise smiles that moved across tiled floors. 

Lance could touch them whenever he tried, and the creatures always fled with water on their faces and thick dirt pouring through their veins. Lance didn't want them to hurt, so they didn't touch them directly. The creatures left trails of bubbles behind them that Lance tried to catch. They could never reach them though. They were always the wrong size or the wrong colour.

Lance always tried. Always pressing further against the emptiness.

He couldn't feel anything. There was no shape here. There was no form here. Colours were without source, blindingly vibrant against the nothingness.

Yellow streaks across his vision, sometimes warm amber, sometimes sickly and rancid.

Black crawling along his skin, sinking into him so deep he could feel it in the still parts inside of him.

Red claws pulling at his eyes, tasting like blood and fading to soft pinks and floral colours. 

Orange twisting through his nose, no scent. 

Green swirling around him, a swarm of dragonflies and gnats.

Purple and Blue. The sound that never left him. The only thing that was louder than the creak and grind of his own bones. A heartbeat.

Lance couldn't feel a thing, even as they fell finally upon an ocean in space. It rushed against them, first a light breeze before striking him in full with a rumble in his chest, filling his lungs with shards of ice, burning fire and silver bubbles.

It hurt. It cut.

It _burned_.

Lance needed more. He could feel it - he needed to be able to feel things again. Even painful things were better than being endlessly numb.

He pressed into the ocean, swallowing the stars and bubbles that raced past in his effort to draw more of it into himself. There was so much empty space inside of himself that he could fill with the stars and the fires and the ocean.

He greedily pulled everything in until the noise overwhelmed him and he lost consciousness.

* * *

The last mission had been a technical success, in that they'd done what they'd set out to do, but otherwise it was a complete mess. Keith tried to force himself to focus on the mission report he'd loaded onto his data-pad, but restless energy thrummed through his veins and made sitting quietly a challenge.

Allura had only started piloting the Blue Lion three days ago and she was struggling to bond with and control the mechanical cat. The fact that she could pilot the Blue Lion at all was useful, even if it had left them in a weird position where Allura could be out in the fight one moment and then have to race back onto the Castle Ship when they needed to retreat so that she could activate the Teludav.

As much as he hated to admit it, they needed to talk about getting a new pilot for Red soon. They needed to be able to form Voltron.

Ugh, Keith really wanted to be moving right now, but he'd promised Hunk he wouldn't train until his whole body felt like it was made of fire and it was rather nice to lean back against the yellow paladin as he poured over some small device in an effort to distract himself.

Lance had been missing for ten days and while Hunk hadn't given up on finding Lance at all, he was starting to lose hope that they'd find Lance undamaged. He seemed to be mentally preparing himself for coping with an injured Lance.

The quiet of the lounge room was broken by the clatter of footsteps racing up the halls. Hunk jerked upright at the noise, leaving Keith to try to catch himself before he slid down onto Hunk's lap again.

The source of the noise burst into the rooms moments later.

"BLUE FOUND HIM! BLUE KNOWS WHERE HE IS!" Pidge shouted at them. 

Keith thought about asking who she was talking about, but one look at the joy and hope on her face told him clearly enough. Pidge was monitoring the Blue Lion, certain that she would try to rescue Lance if he were in danger, the way Red would always do for Keith.

Ten days and she hadn't reacted once before.

Keith leaped off of the chair and sprinted out the door, Pidge on his heels and Hunk close behind. The data pad clattered to the floor, forgotten.

"Suit up!" Keith shouted, hearing the tell-tale sound of Allura sprinting towards them. If Blue was moving on her own, then Lance was close enough for her to find.

If Blue was moving on her own, then Lance might be in danger.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> Lance has been captured by the Galra and placed somewhere dark, suspended in an unknow fluid. The remaining three paladins have had no luck locating him, and with Shiro still missing, the team has been strained almost to breaking point.  
> Finally, after ten days they've had a breakthrough - the Blue Lion has located something!

Lance wasn't sure he was still alive. He was terrified that this was what death was like - trapped in nothing, with no outside stimulation and only the taste of blood. He'd seen no-one outside of himself, heard no-one else, felt nothing real in... ages. Lance had no idea how long. And now, finally, something would happen.

Something was coming.

Panic gripped them - unless that was hope? They weren't sure if they were awake or asleep, and there wasn't a huge difference between the two any more, so the point was probably moot. All he knew, in a way that he couldn't even think about putting into words, was that something was coming. Something from outside was going to happen to him.

His heart battered at his ribs, painfully fast and loud within his chest, drowning out all other noises. Nothing had happened to him since he'd been put here. He saw and heard lots of things, but he was dimly aware that they weren't real things, just hallucinations. Misfiring neurons and phantom sensations.

Anxiety slid over them, thick and cold. A rumble in his chest soothed him, curled over his heart, pulled his racing pulse down to manageable levels. His mind sparked in a brief moment of outside awareness before it was muffled and swallowed by the endless dark.

Lance tried to make a noise, but his lungs were still filled with liquid and his throat was underused. He tried to reach out, no clear direction in mind aside from 'Away from himself'.

For the first time in what felt like forever, Lance had a coherent thought.

_Come find me. I'm in here._

_Please... get me out._

_See me._

_Find me._

_Please._

* * *

Blue lead them to the same star system they'd lost Lance to begin with, but not to the same planet. Instead, she flew away from the central star and headed for the next planet out, straight towards its large, single moon.

The moon was entirely covered in water under a thick haze of clouds. Their scanners didn't even register that there was anything _on_ the moon, let alone any kind of base or Galran outpost. As it turned out, the clouds acted almost like chaff, disrupting all attempts to scan the planet below.

The perfect place to hide this horror-show of a research base. 

"We'd be within our jurisdiction to burn this place down," Keith commented absently as he placed another unconscious, bound alien into the storage closet. Aside from three rather negligent Galra guards, they had so far encountered four long-limbed aliens with rounded lizard-like heads filled with long, needle teeth. All had been carefully knocked out, tied up, and piled up in a small room.

Nearby, Pidge hummed her acknowledgement, eyes focused on the laptop in front of her and surrounded by the severed pieces of the latest robots that had gotten between them and Lance.

The base that Lance was held in seemed to be a laboratory or processing plant of some kind. Keith and Pidge had come across a carefully constructed network of tubes, pipes, and infusing and distillation equipment that seemed to be processing several different kinds of liquid. Keith recognised the quintessence, both in it's raw form and in it's Galran Processed form, but there was also a luminously cyan liquid that hummed when they got near, an oil-slick black-and-violet jelly, and a clear liquid that barely refracted the light at all and messed with Keith's eyes.

"It won't burn," Pidge pointed out, fingers not pausing for a moment as she scrolled through the robot's data-banks. "For a start, it's under water."

"You could do it. I believe in you," Keith responded, closing the closet door. Pidge gave him a small, strained smile and half of a chuckle.

None of the usual robotic sentinels had impeded their progress into the facility, replaced instead by larger, clunky machines with almost barrel shaped bodies that moved around like crabs. Keith presumed it had something to do with the environment around the base. 

Pidge had gutted one of the crab-sentries to use its information banks, trying to work out where in this building Lance might be kept, and another was kept slightly more intact, in case they needed it to open any doors.

Keith was not looking forwards to having to walk through the rest of this place.

There was a sudden silence as Pidge's hands stopped moving over the keys. Keith looked over to her, a spike of worry flashing through his mind.

"Pidge?" Keith prompted. Pidge stared vacantly through the screen in front of her, eyebrows drawn together in something like confusion or concern. "Did you find something about Lance?"

"Hmm?" Pidge blinked, gaze darting up to meet Keith as she snapped out of whatever had drawn her into a daze. "No, nothing about Lance. But... I think I know where he is."

Keith took a deep breath. "I won't say that those two statements directly contradict each other..."

"No no, I know they do," Pidge waved a hand at Keith before snapping her laptop closed. "I don't know how I know where he is, I just... know. Maybe Blue is telling me Lance's location through Green?"

"Why only you, instead of telling us both?" Keith asked, trying not to sound too much like he doubted her word. "The Red and Black Lions are both back in the castle with the Green Lion."

Pidge shrugged as she quickly tugged the cables out of the gutted robot before standing. "Might have something to do with some of the improvements I've made to Green. It's got a way better signal transmission system now.

"We should only need this part," she continued, grabbing the robot's severed arm and gesturing with it to one of the doors leading back into the hall. "He's this way. Follow me."

Keith pressed his lips together tightly before following, just hoping that they weren't being lead into a trap.

Together they made their way through the facility, Pidge checking for activity on the other side of each door before loading the required clearance into the robotic hand to get through. She moved through the corridors as though she knew exactly where she was going, deviating only when the enemy presence was too concentrated to take down quietly. 

Keith still felt tense and on edge as they moved; every door was a new chance to be ambushed, and even though Keith had faith in his own and Pidge's abilities, they had no idea what state they would find Lance in. Every room was a new potential fight, if they got caught; every room they passed was another room they might need to carry an injured or - or dead - Lance through. 

Finally, Pidge opened a large, innocuous looking door. She discarded the mechanical arm she'd been carrying almost carelessly behind her.

"Here," Pidge pronounced, the words heavy with dread. "Lance is in this room."

Keith didn't bother asking how she knew.

The room itself was dark, the ineffectual light that the few overhead bulbs put out barely reaching the floor and casting the room into strange, long shadows. A few fat columns lined the walls, with two more occupying the center of the room, reaching from the ceiling to the floor and completely encased in a dark material that didn't help with the warped shadows. Each one of them had a raised console and monitor beside them and the room was dominated by strange, arcane control stations that were obviously Galra, but completely alien to Keith.

Huh. Alien. Hunk would have liked that one. Lance would groan at it.

The pair stepped carefully into the room, both agreeing wordlessly to keep their Bayards out, their footsteps cautious, and to stay on the lookout for trouble.

The room seemed to be completely empty of life with no other entrances, and something about it seemed... familiar to Keith. It wasn't exactly like the facility that the badger-bear had been stored in, but a lot of this equipment looked the same.

Pidge started to walk towards one of the central pillars, eyes darting into all of the dark, shadowed places around the room as she approached. She stopped in front of it, staring at it in confusion.

Keith waited a moment for her to say something, but she remained worryingly silent.

"Can you access the computers here?" Keith asked quietly once it became clear that she wasn't going to speak. Pidge flinched in surprise, as though she'd forgotten that Keith was there. "Maybe if we know what this room was used for, we'll know why you were drawn here."

Pidge shot Keith a slightly lost look before looking back around the room and nodding. "Right... yes. There's something..." she muttered to herself, already pulling her laptop out. She plugged the machine into the nearest Galran computer terminal with practiced ease, the whole process second nature to her now. Keith used the brief time it took Pidge to set up to check the exit again and confirm that it was clear.

"Alright, Atlantis," Pidge said under her breath once the laptop was connected. "Reveal to me your secrets."

Keith tuned out the steady ticking of Pidge's fingers on the keys as she navigated through her programs and the terminal's file system, instead walking further into the room to poke at the darker shadows and make sure they really were empty.

He'd completed a half a circuit of the room before Pidge made a small sound of triumph.

"A-ha!" she exclaimed quietly, followed by "Huh," and finally finishing with an apprehensive "Oh..."

When Keith turned around, Pidge was staring at the same pillar she'd approached when she entered the room.

"He's there." Pidge pointed the dark column. Keith looked at her blankly.

"In the pillar?" He asked.

Pidge shook her head. "No, those things aren't support structures. They're vats. When I first stepped in, I was... I was sure that he was right there." Pidge pointed again to the same column. It looked no different to any of the others.

Keith still approached it cautiously. "How do we get it open?" He asked. 

Pidge typed something behind him. "Try activating the console in front of you," She instructed. "It needs to be directly turned on by a Galra. I can't do anything to it remotely."

Keith frowned slightly at that, but touched the nearest raised console. The machine immediately blinked to life, the light it emitted dazzling Keith for a moment as it cut through the otherwise gloomy room. Across the monitor, strings of Galran text and numbers came to life next to charts with lines and curves that might as well have been pictures of random geometric shapes for all the sense they made to Keith.

"Now what?" He asked. 

Pidge came up beside him, peering at the screen in thought. "Um... I don't know." She poked at the screen, causing it to flicker slightly but showed no other reaction. "There has to be a way to open it. Can you see an 'override' option or an 'open' option?"

Keith looked over the keyboard, feeling a bit like a dog that had been put in front of a calculator and asked to solve for 'X' in an equation he'd never seen. "I understand almost none of this," he said. 

Pidge pointed at the screen again."Here, try this option. Type... uh, okay, hold down the line with the zig-zag over it, then press the pointy boomerang with the half circle over it." She gestured to the keys that had lit up softly to display the characters. 

Keith did as instructed. "Ah!" the monitor flickered over to a new display. "The screen changed."

"Don't worry, that's good. Now, press the zigzag-line button twice quickly to switch to the alternate menus. Now press the key that looks like a backwards seven having a seizure, then..." Carefully, Pidge continued to guide Keith through the menu, until at last a screen that even Keith recognised as a dialogue box appeared with a slowly decreasing bar.

"That's good, right?" Keith asked.

"I guess so?" Pidge responded, just as a sharp hissing sound filled the room. Both paladins leaped back, Keith automatically moving himself in front of Pidge as the smaller girl almost climbed his back in surprise.

The shell of the column dropped smoothly into the ground below, revealing a clear tank only a few inches narrower than the original. The tank was filled with a liquid that Keith could only describe as 'yellow-blue'. Not green, but somehow yellow and blue at the same time.

Motionless within the pillar of liquid floated Lance.

Alarm rang through Keith's body at the sight, his mind immediately jumping to the conclusion that Lance had drowned or been killed and preserved like some kind of sick trophy. The cold, sharp panic rushed into pure elation when Lance's eyes carefully opened and blinked at them.

"Lance!" Pidge exclaimed, voice on the verge of laughter as she struggled to remain quiet. She pressed a hand up against the clear sides of the tank. "Hold on, okay? We'll have you out of there in no time."

Keith had no idea if Lance could hear Pidge, but after a moment of staring blankly at her hand, he reached his arm towards them, fingers outstretched.

Keith placed his hand on the glass, studying the man inside the tube. Lance didn't look injured, aside from being in a vat of liquid that he could apparently breathe. His Paladin suit was gone, replaced with a black body-suit that fit him like a second skin. The surface of the suit was textured with red ridges, and the whole thing looked solid despite bending and moving with Lance as he tried to move towards them. The back of the suit had a large ridge running down it that merged into a tail-like cord or cable at the base of the spine. His crotch was, thankfully, covered in a larger, more solid piece that also melded into a long cable, both of which connected Lance to the ground beneath him.

"Keith, I need your DNA again," Pidge called from the control panel. With a last look at Lance, Keith moved over to assist Pidge in draining the tank.

It felt like the process took forever. Far longer than Keith would have liked, at least. Every moment he had to wait increased the chances of them getting caught, and Keith felt utterly helpless. Lance was literally only feet away from him and Keith still couldn't reach him.

Lance collapsed onto his knees as soon as the level of liquid in the tank allowed him to bend over without his face being submerged, violently coughing up fluid and throwing up. Keith couldn't help but be a little relieved that the tank was apparently completely soundproof; It was bad enough having to watch someone all but throw up a lung, if he had to stand by and _listen_ to Lance while there was nothing he could do about it, he might just break the tank in frustration.

Finally, finally, the tank decoupled from the ground with a sharp hiss and raised into the ceiling. Lance spat the last of something out and turned around sluggishly to start pulling at the pair of cords that connected him to the floor.

"Lance! Holy crow, Lance!" Pidge cried, leaping towards Lance and grabbing the dazed man by the shoulder. Lance flinched at the touch before turning towards her and blinking again, still tugging at the tubes that held him to the ground. "Alright, okay - hold on. We're gonna get you out of here, okay?"

Lance watched her with slightly parted lips, blinking lazily at her. His lack of response was worrying Keith far more than he wanted to admit, so when Lance nodded slowly and moved his hands away from his tethers Keith actually sighed in relief. Just that small acknowledgement made him feel disproportionately better.

Pidge carefully prised the smaller cord out of the ground, splashing herself with some sparkling blue fluid from inside it when it finally popped free.

The larger cord was not so cooperative. 

A loud clang was heard from the door as it was thrown inwards, revealing another of the large, crab-like robots filling the doorway.

Apparently, they were out of time.

With a sharp growl, Keith swung his sword at the larger of the two cables, severing it as high up as he could.

"Get ready to move!" Keith ordered, turning to face his new opponents.

"Can you stand?" Pidge asked Lance. Keith didn't wait around long enough to find out the answer.

* * *

Lance placed his head against the cool metal of some strange crab-legged robot that Pidge had re-programmed to carry him when it became clear that he was not going to be able to keep up. No matter how hard he'd tried, he just couldn't seem to move fast and stay upright at the same time. He felt swamped by all the colours and sounds and smells that were suddenly around him and his sense of balance was struggling to deal with both weight and having outside stimulation to re-calibrate against.

He felt amazing.

He felt overwhelmed.

He felt completely useless.

In front of Lance and his new Robo-helper, Keith and Pidge fought a large, heavily scarred Galra with fin-like ears. They were winning despite the Galra being so much stronger; Keith and Pidge were fast and they worked well as a team when they fought together. Pidge would trip and distract, while Keith would go in for the kill.

Lance could feel the other species that staffed this place fleeing from them. He recognised them, sort of. He was pretty sure he'd touched some of them during his time without senses.

They seemed afraid of him.

He tried to pull his focus back to the room in front of him and the beautiful, violent dance that the paladins and Galra soldier were engaged in. Lance's blood wanted to move too, to rejoice in his new freedom. He wanted to dance with them, but he didn't have his Bayard, his paladin armor, or his wits. Big and Ugly over there had them. Probably. Lance wasn't convinced that fin-ears hadn't somehow taken his wits and put them into a box along with the rest of his belongings.

Finnear. Lance was gonna call that one Finnear.

Pidge darted back, her Bayard carefully tangled around the Galra's legs as she tugged the cables tight. Poor Finnear hadn't even realised that Pidge's quick movements were also meant to give Keith an opening to attack.

With a sharp kick from Keith, the Galra went crashing down to the ground. Pidge retracted her Bayard quickly and jammed the reformed blade into the back of Finnear's neck, shocking him into unconsciousness.

Keith leaped over the prone body of the Galra and into the room he'd been guarding, sword cutting through the chains holding the storage lockers shut easily.

"Nearly there," Pidge informed him, returning to his side. Lance found himself wanting to giggle as the sound of her voice tickled his ears, even if the words didn't make a huge amount of sense. He wasn't sure where they were supposed to be near. Maybe the water? Lance could feel the cool ocean pressing down against him, twisting around him, promising complete freedom of movement.

Lance wasn't completely sure whether the ocean was the actual ocean or just Blue. It might be both.

"Okay, we've got the Bayard and most of the armour. Looks like the under-suit is missing." Keith reported as he walked out of the room, a collection of white and blue plates in one hand, Lance's helmet and Bayard in the other. It took Lance longer than he would have liked to realise that Keith was reporting to someone on the other end of the coms.

"We can head back to the entrance, but it's going to take a bit longer." Pidge continued the report. "We've seen- Guh!" Pidge ducked, bringing her shield up to defend against a volley of shots. Some of them struck the back of Lance's Robo-helper with a sharp bang. Lance tucked his legs back and curled up smaller, trying to keep every part of him hidden behind the metal armour of his robot. He could hear Allura shouting for a status update through Pidge's helmet; it sounded like distant music.

"We're under fire," Keith responded. "I didn't even know these guys had guns!" If the voices were music, Keith's voice should be a bass guitar. Something smooth but slightly monotone.

"We're not around the scientific equipment any more!" Pidge called back at Keith. "There's no reason for them to hold back the fire power!" 

Pidge was probably a woodwind of some kind. Like a flute or a... clarinet? An oboe. Oboe was a great word. It felt round in his mind. 

Lance looked from Pidge to where his Bayard was still in Keith's hands. If he could get there, he could fire from behind Keith's shield. That'd at least give them some cover fire. Carefully, he slid out of his Robot's arms, stumbling slightly when he hit the ground. He staggered forwards, breaking into a dash when he felt the world tilt around him.

Not a moment too soon, as his robot sparked and collapsed under the barrage of laser fire. A small, slightly pathetic flame licked out of the chest of the robot, releasing an acrid blue smoke that started pouring up to the ceiling.

Before he knew it, he was rolling behind Keith. He flailed towards Keith's hand, grabbing at the blue paladin helmet before grabbing his Bayard on the second attempt. It didn't change immediately in his hand, leaving him struggling to remember how he told it to change before. Had he told it to? It was more like it just knew what he would be best with, and it changed to fit. Lance was having trouble understanding the object in his hand as something that belonged to him, let alone something that was shaped by his will. 

Besides, there was still laser fire around him, so Lance could barely concentrate. The attacking robots kicked Lance's Robo-Helper out of their path, triggering another lick of flame and a cloud of oily smoke.

Then it started to rain milk.

... Wait.

Lance looked up to the ceiling, which looked so much closer than it should have been, leaving Lance irrationally certain that he would hit his head if he stood upright despite that demonstrably not being true. Above them, set into the roof, were rows of small disks filled with three sets of tiny shower heads. Each disk had one nozzle that was spraying-

Sprinkler system. That was the sprinkler system. So this would be a fire suppressant.

Lance tried not to gasp at the feeling of the gritty white water against his skin. The stupid suit he still wore left him unable to feel anything around him, not even the ground he was walking on. No wonder he couldn't move properly - he was getting no feedback about where his body was and he didn't remember how to just let his body move anymore. But he could feel his face and that reminded him that he could control each muscle in his body. He'd practiced moving them all individually.

"Keith!" Pidge called over the blasts, falling back. "If we head back and then left, there's a flood door. We can lock off this part of the facility temporarily." 

Lance shuffled back slightly to allow Keith the room to retreat, not really sure what most of the words being said were. He pressed his Bayard to his forehead and flexed each muscle from his wrists down. When he ran out of muscles in his hand, he moved further down again. In his hands, his Bayard switched to its usual rifle mode, weighing his arms down with the sudden shift in mass distribution. He shifted his hands apart, pulling his Bayard in two with a click.

Two long-barreled laser pistols sat in his hands.

"Then what?" Keith asked, answering Pidge despite his focus remaining completely on the robots stepping over their fallen robo-brother. They were close, only meters away now. Keith moved back and flexed his hands on his sword, preparing to engage the enemy. Lance watched the way his balance changed as he shifted, weight moved to the back foot in preparation of a dash, front leg shifting further under him to allow him to rise quickly. The move was oddly fascinating, and Lance felt himself drawn forwards, wanting to mirror the movement.

"No idea," Pidge responded. Keith nodded.

Lance didn't need to rise and engage, he had guns. Two of them. He didn't need to be accurate, which was good - the white water helped him focus on distances, but he wasn't sure he was going to be terribly accurate.

"Okay, let's do it. Grab Lance, I'll cover yo-" Keith cut himself off as Lance rested both pistols on the top of his shield, arms extending over his shoulder. Focusing down his arms again, Lance moved his index fingers. There was no feeling of feedback as the lasers fired, striking into the wall of metal and legs that was marching up the corridor towards him. He couldn't even feel the trigger under his fingers. It felt less like he was firing and more like he was miming.

The front line of robots crouched back, arms raised defensively over their sensory equipment as bolts of blue crackled across them.

"That works," Pidge commented, grabbing Lance by the wrist and taking off back down the hall. Lance stumbled upwards and poured all his focus into moving his legs.

The ground was always slightly further away that he was expecting, leaving Lance running like a newborn giraffe trying to work out where it's knees actually were. Added to that, the floor was damp and slippery underfoot and the suit he was in had absolutely no grip on it. It was inevitable that he'd slip and fall. He just tried to hold off that inevitability until the last minute.

Pidge dragged him around a corner, and his legs didn't quite keep up with the turn, sending him toppling to the ground and rolling along the corridors to gently collide with the wall. He felt like that should have hurt, but he felt nothing but dizziness caused by the spinning and the sudden change from vertical to horizontal. Keith rounded the corner moments later and Pidge jammed something into a box on the wall, playing around with her wrist for a few moments.

Lance could see the crab-legged robots come around the corner just before the flood doors closed, sealing off the corridor.

"Put your helmet on." Pidge instructed, turning back to Lance. "I don't know if activating the flood doors will make the system try to drain this section."

Lance stared at her blankly for a moment, aware that she was talking to him, but not completely grasping what she was asking him to do. Keith thrust his helmet in front of him, so Lance carefully pushed himself upright and placed both pistols on his lap before taking it from Keith.

Oh, right. 'Put your helmet on'. There might be poison, or no oxygen. The helmet had a small reserve of air, and could seal off his head. So long as this suit could survive it, his helmet would help him live a bit longer if the place was flooded or had no air.

Lance pulled the helmet over his head. It sealed snugly around the top of his suit, the full visor and face mask materialising. The air was nicer in the suit. He hadn't realised how weird the air had been before - it was just nice not to be breathing liquid.

"-make it to one of the outer walls?" Allura was asking over the coms.

"We can. The outside isn't too far from here," Keith replied.

Lance picked up his Bayard pistols and pressed them together, watching them fuse in his hand and collapse down to their portable form. He was pretty sure he hadn't told his pistols to do that.

"Good. I'll see if I can crack through the walls," Allura informed the team. "If I get through, I can pick you up there. If not, then we'll find out exactly how the flooded sections are flushed out. We may be able to use that to get you out without you having to head back to the loading bay."

"Got it," Keith said. He walked over to Lance and knelt down next to him.

"Come on," Keith muttered, low enough that Lance wasn't sure whether Keith was talking to Lance or himself. "That won't hold them forever." 

Lance found the world around him tilting and resettling as Keith slung one of his arms over a sharp shoulder to support him as the trio began to walk towards the ocean.

Lance concentrated on walking, gaining a bit of confidence as Keith tried to hurry him onward. The movement took up so much of his focus that he almost missed the call of "Brace yourselves" through the coms.

That was all the warning he got before the pandemonium. There was a shrill screech that made Lance flinch and stumble, trying to escape the noise. Then water pressed in around him, rushing fast through a small slice in the Lab's hull somewhere up ahead of them. Pidge and Keith held themselves up with no problem, but Lance was immediately knocked down, falling heavily against Keith. His hands scrabbled against the armour, but Lance couldn't feel anything through the suit. He had no idea whether he was even grabbing onto anything, and he was too worried to unclasp his hands, in case his Bayard slipped out. His other arm was slung over Pidge's shoulder and the Bayard removed from his grip.

"Hold on," Pidge instructed him. Lance had no idea how to do that, but Keith was no longer under his other arm, so he tried to wrap it around Pidge. Pidge fired her Bayard somewhere forwards, her blade wrapping itself around something. "Ready!" she called into the coms.

A blaze of blue energy punched through the wall and again there was a piercing, rending whine as it tore across the surface, making the hole larger and sending more water gushing in. The cacophony of chaos and confusion redoubled around them and Lance was sure he was slipping out of Pidge's grip, falling backwards into the endless sea. Pidge seemed to have a tight hold on him though. He couldn't see Keith anywhere. He couldn't see Pidge, really. He couldn't see much of anything, except a large blue paw peeling back the outer walls of the base.

A pair of yellow eyes peered through the hole before the whole head was shoved in, slowing the flow of water around it. It surged forwards to meet Lance - no, wait. The head wasn't moving. Lance was moving, pulled forwards by Pidge retracting her blade, sending the pair racing towards the ocean, towards that enormous blue head, and into the open mouth filled with metal teeth.

The sudden quiet after all the noise was almost as disorienting as tumbling into the Blue Lion had been, but Lance recognised where he was immediately.

_'Blue.'_

Lance reached out towards the ocean that lived inside the Blue Lion, leaving his body motionless on the floor while he pressed his mental hands into the cool water. He stepped forwards to press further in, to let her pour into the emptiness inside him and feel that connection again with his Lion...

Only for a wall of ice to spring up and stop him.

Lance blinked, stepping back towards his body. He reached out again, looking for something to connect with, only to be met with more ice.

Blue was freezing him out. Metaphorically, at least.

_'Why? What did I do?'_ Lance managed to articulate as he looked around him. There was only endless walls of ice. He spun in a circle, an irrational panic rising up within him. _'What did I...'_

The ice and the ocean fell away for a moment, leaving Lance standing in an endless field of stars. Stars of all colours spun around him through nebulae clouds in deep purples and blues, dark reds and bright whites, oranges and yellows. And between the little lights, an endlessly expanding distance. An emptiness. An endless darkness.

Someone else was there. Someone was in the stardust and the emptiness. Someone was there, in the darkness.

Lance's heart ached for them, the pain spreading out from his chest through well worn paths inside him. It hurt to be trapped in the dark, with no senses and nothing aside from the echoing rasp of your own thoughts. It hurt to be so utterly cut off from everything that you were painfully alone. It hurt to be emptied of everything. 

_I deserved it._

Lance knew that person. He knew them...

He stepped forwards again, towards the stars and whoever was there, but something grabbed him by the... the tail? Right, the bit of his suit that hung down behind him right now. Someone tugged on it, pulling him back to his body. He fell away from the stars, crashing down past the walls of ice.

With a start, Lance realised that there was also someone in the ocean, behind the ice. _Someone was already connected to Blue._ A beautiful woman, made of sparkling ice and starlight, with eyes the colour of the ocean on a clear day. She looked... like she belonged there.

_Allura._

Lance blinked, finding himself in the cockpit of the Blue Lion. Before him knelt Allura, worry warring with joy across her face. Her eyes shone a little with unshed tears.

Lance blinked slowly at her before looking around the cockpit, noting that Keith and Pidge were both there, much to his relief. His helmet had been taken off though. Wait, no it was still on, the face plate had just gone away now.

"He hasn't actually said anything since we found him," Pidge commented. 

Lance looked over at her, slightly confused. Had he really not said anything?

Keith crouched down next to Allura, watching him cautiously. "Lance, what happened to you?" he asked quietly.

Lance almost laughed. He only held himself back out of fear that he might never stop laughing if he started now. He focused instead on carefully forming his reply, making sure the words were fully formed in his mind and deliberately pushed out of his mouth.

"N-nothing," Lance managed, the word strangled by his throat. It felt like forever since he'd used it, and the word sounded foreign and unwieldy. He took a breath and tried again. "Nothing happened."


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> A daring rescue! Keith and Pidge break into an underwater laboratory, eventually breaking Lance out of the vat he's been imprissoned in. Their escape encountered some resistance, forcing Allura (Piloting the Blue Lion) to make them a new exit in the external walls of the base.
> 
> Free at last, Lance has an unusual encounter upon entering the Blue Lion for the first time.

Having so many people around was... dizzying. Lance could hear team Voltron moving around outside of the examination room and he was having a hard time picking through all the noise to work out what he should be focusing on. It was worse when someone spoke. His mind wanted to focus on all of their voices and what they were actually saying, he wanted to make all the words somehow make sense; it was stressful trying to focus only on Coran as he spoke when all he wanted was to split his focus between the tall Altean and the sound of frantic, whispered questions coming from outside the door. That stress was compounded by the fact that Lance was having trouble even keeping his eyes on Coran's face without finding himself staring at the ginger's mustache as it changed colours and styles before his eyes. Plus, a lot of what Coran said didn't make sense to Lance at the best of times, let alone with the state he was in now, so the words were blurring away into musicality over a steady beat of clicking teeth unless he really focused.

Mustaches were kind of like mouth comb-overs, or teeth bangs. Long, thin, waxed fingers that slipped and slid around words, scrubbing them clean on the way out.

No, focus on Coran. His hair wasn't changing colours, it was just another hallucination. Just his brain fixating on a few small things to try and re-adjust to seeing again.

At least Coran seemed to be done scanning Lance. The blue paladin was seated on a high bench that put him at the right height for Coran to run a myriad of weird devices past him. The room was neat and aqua-colored with enormous tinted windows that became opaque when Coran flipped a switch on the door. Lance tried to look only at the big details rather than focusing too much on the thousands of small things around him.

"There we go, all done!" Coran said with a smile. "Get yourself dressed again and come out when you're ready, okay?" He seemed to expect a response, so Lance nodded.

"All okay then, yeah?" he asked, mumbling. 

Coran ruffled his hair, sparking a not-unpleasant tingling down his scalp and neck. The only medical treatment he'd gotten so far were a couple of self-adhesive plasters on the back of his neck where there had apparently been a couple of tubes or something. Coran had removed them with a device of... some kind. If there really was nothing else wrong...

"All clear," the Altean confirmed. "You're fit as a Frykor."

Lance thought about asking what that meant, but Coran was already turning to leave the room, hanging the most recent scanner up on its stand as he went.

"Well?" Allura asked Coran as he stepped out of the room. Lance pulled a shirt on over his head, skin prickling at the rough texture of the fabric. He thought about taking it off again, but a shiver convinced him that he'd rather be warm. Once he returned to his room, he could crawl into bed and lie down. Horizontally, in the warmth, with the lights on and maybe even some music.

"Perfectly healthy, no need for a pod," Coran pronounced. "Might have lost a bit of weight, but he's not malnourished. Toxicology says that there's nothing bad in his system, but I found some ports in the back of his neck and a numbing agent all over the inside of the suit and on his skin."

Allura made a confused sound.

"Like an anesthesia?" Hunk asked, voice trembling slightly. "Lance hasn't been... I mean, he wasn't hurt, was he? I know, you just said he didn't need to be podded, but I mean- well, he hasn't been... uh..." He swallowed loudly.

Lance stayed on the bench, looking at the ground as he focused on listening and ignoring the flash of lightning that he could see out of the corner of his eye.

"He hasn't been, like, experimented on or tortured or injured and then healed up or anything, has he?" Hunk finally finished, words racing out as he asked.

"Not that I could find." Coran responded, voice unusually serious. "Inflicting harm and then healing up a victim isn't usually the Galra way. I didn't find any lingering energy signatures that might have indicated one of the empire's Tables of Pain either."

"Oh crow, is that what they're called?" Hunk asked, sounding slightly nauseous.

"Lance tells me that they didn't do anything to him," Coran continued, "and the scans confirm that. Physically, he's completely fine."

"Then why is he so... un-Lance-like right now?" Keith asked.

Lance bristled. What exactly was 'Un-Lance-like'?

"He was gone ten days, and he's barely spoken since he got back!" Keith continued, frustration bleeding into his voice. There was more afterwards, more words and responses, but Lance couldn't hear anything anymore.

Ten days.

He'd been gone ten days. He hadn't seen or felt or heard or smelt anything for ten days.

It felt like months.

It wasn't even two weeks.

Only ten days. It sounded like barely any time at all and when he tried to look back and work out what happened there was... nothing. Nothing had happened, but it felt like it had happened for so much longer than ten days.

How long had it been before he'd stopped struggling? How quickly had he just given up? Had he lasted days? Hours?

Maybe only minutes.

Crow, he was so pathetic.

Shiro had been in the Galra's hands for a year. It was hard to remember that sometimes with how strong and solid Shiro had always seemed, moving with confidence and command even in unfamiliar places. Lance felt like this after being alone for only ten days. Shiro had escaped a year of horror, by himself, only to immediately be drawn back into fighting against the people that had hurt him. Lance knew that Shiro didn't remember a lot of his time as a captive, but whatever had happened... it was something truly awful. Bad enough that his mind had blanked it out to protect itself and his hair had gone white from the stress of it. But he still stood tall, refused to balk or crumble under the weight of all that awful stuff and pushed through everything that tried to drag him back down.

Compared to that, it was ridiculous to feel so wrong after only ten days.

In ten days, Allura had been able to replace Lance as Blue's pilot. Lance remembered that glimpse of Allura that he'd seen inside of Blue; she looked like she could belong there. Lance had been sure that Allura should be piloting the Black Lion, but if that wasn't going to happen, then maybe she was meant to pilot Blue?

He really had been replaced by the time Voltron had come for him. He'd been absolutely right. There were probably a lot of things that he'd been right about that he had tried not to think on until he'd been left alone in the dark. The familiar ache of those thoughts bloomed in his chest, settling in like an old friend before fading out again. Those facts had been worn smooth now, like stones tumbled by a river until their edges were all knocked off. Heavy, but no longer cutting.

'So where does that leave me?' A part of Lance thought. He frowned at the selfishness of that. Was he always so selfish? It felt like he must be. That must be part of being more Lance-like again.

They still hadn't replaced Keith as Red's pilot. They'd talked about it, and everyone knew it needed to be done if they were ever to form Voltron again, but they hadn't really looked yet. Red was so picky, and his bond with Keith was still stronger than anyone else's bond with their Lions. The Red Lion still responded to Keith and still came running when Keith was in trouble, even while Keith was piloting the Black Lion. No one had a stronger bond with their Lion than Red had with Keith.

It had taken a bit of time for the Keith to build up enough rapport with the Black Lion to reliably pilot him, but everyone already knew that he could. Now he switched between them, piloting Red when speed and agility was needed and Black when power was needed. He could pilot them both with almost equal skill and finesse.

Compared to that, it made sense that Lance was much easier to replace. If Keith was the only one who was anywhere near good enough to replace Shiro, then who could ever replaced Keith?

Lance could try, he supposed. Maybe he could try to at least pilot Red, even if he never bonded with the Red lion the way Keith had. Then Allura could keep piloting Blue, and they could form Voltron and keep fighting. Except that the idea of doing it again - of stepping into the space that Keith had vacated, to only have something because Keith had discarded it or moved on again, to have to just be a weak, unwanted replacement for Keith again- burned through him like acid, filling his mouth and throat with resentment and self disgust.

It was stupid and mean and selfish. So very, very selfish. Lance deserved to be replaced.

Before he realised what was happening, Lance found himself on his hands and knees, stomach convulsing as he threw up a combination of bile and the blood-water he'd been in for the past ten days. His hands and knees ached with the impact, reverberations still running up and down his arms.

How long had it been before he'd lost himself, now that he was being 'Un-Lance' like? Had he managed to forget himself in under ten days? Was there really so very little of him to remember? Maybe he was actually that shallow.

Was he Un or Less? That seemed to be a very important distinction, although Lance couldn't quite remember why.

Un-Lance, meaning in a way opposite to Lance.

Lance-less, meaning without Lance.

There was a gloved hand placed on the back of his neck and Lance wanted to curl himself up into it. Coran wore full white gloves, so Lance felt confident that he could assume the hand belonged to Coran. Keith was still in his armour, but he normally wore fingerless gloves, one of his own and one that used to belong to Shiro. Lance had never commented on it, but he knew immediately who it had belonged to. It was slightly larger than Keith's hand, although he didn't seem to mind. Huh. That was odd - Hunk wore fingerless gloves too. Was Lance the weird one for not wearing gloves? It seemed like every other guy Lance knew wore gloves.

"There there," Coran's voice cut into his thoughts, steady and soothing. "That's right, get all that gunk out."

"I thought you said that there was nothing bad in his system!" Keith snapped from somewhere above Lance. Lance hoped that Hunk wasn't in the room as well. The guy couldn't see someone else throwing up without wanting to throw up himself.

"And there isn't!" Coran said. "The PFC liquid from the tank is perfectly safe for breathing and packed with nutrition. Quite remarkable, actually." There was a pause in conversation, during which Lance managed to stop retching. There wasn't anything else to throw up anyway. "I expect that Lance has just had... well, had a gutful of it. Haven't you?"

Lance sat back and wiped at his mouth. Coran let his hand fall off of Lance's neck, and Lance had to resist the urge to chase it and put it back. The tall Altean was kneeling next to him, putting himself nearly at eye-level with Lance and looking at him as though expecting him to reply to something. Behind Coran stood Keith, looking pinched and worried, with Hunk only a step or two behind. Hunk already had a slightly queasy look. Pidge and Allura watched from the door with matching expressions of concern. It was actually a little funny how similar they looked.

"Sorry," Lance mumbled. It seemed appropriate to say. "M'not contagion."

"Contagious, and we know, don't worry about it." Coran offered Lance a hand to help him up. Lance was pretty sure he didn't need it, but he took it anyway. "Think you could eat something?"

Lance thought about it, trying to get a read on what his body actually wanted. He'd just thrown up everything that was in his stomach, so it was probably a good idea to put something else in it before he locked himself in his room. He had no idea how long it would take to properly feel like Lance again. And he hadn't eaten food for ten days, apparently. Tasting something besides blood sounded super appealing.

"Hmm," Lance agreed after his deliberation. "Yeah. I-uh, could eat something."

"I'll take him!" Hunk jumped in, raising a hand as though he were in class. He stepped around Keith to wrap an arm over Lance's shoulder and start leading him out of the room. Hunk's arm seemed heavy to Lance, but it was soft and warm, so he made no effort to remove it and just let himself slouch under the weight.

They were out in the hallway when Hunk spoke again. His voice was pitched low, and conspiratorial, as though sharing a secret between the two of them. Lance automatically leaned in to hear better.

"Hey... are you really sure that you're okay?" Hunk asked, voice laced with concern. "You can talk to me man, if something happened."

"Nothing happened, Hunk." Lance said, trying to impart the depths of exactly how much nothing had happened. "Absolute nothing."

Hunk looked at him like he didn't quite believe the Blue Paladin, so Lance continued speaking.

"I didn't see a single Galra until after Pidge and Keith... found me," he continued. "No one even touched me."

Hunk breathed out a long sigh. "Man, I was so scared," he said, shaking his head. "I mean, knowing what they did to Shiro... and he wasn't even their enemy at the time."

"Shiro." Lance said the name out loud, mind falling back into itself for a moment. The name felt oddly heavy on his tongue.

Shiro was actually a hero, not just playing dress-up as one the way Lance felt like he was sometimes. He used to think that feeling that way was pretty normal, but... Maybe it wasn't.

Lance knew that Shiro had scars that he didn't want to show anyone and he assumed everyone else knew it too. It wasn't just that Zarkon and the Druids had taken his arm and a year of his life. They'd left scars over every part of him, including his mind. Lance had seen him fall into a flashback and heard him wake up shouting, but never been able to offer any kind of help. He'd wanted to, but Shiro always held him at arm's length and Lance never could work out how to bridge that distance.

How do you help someone when they don't accept you as an equal?

They weren't close, no matter how much Lance wanted them to be. He'd even tried to get closer by going on missions with Shiro where it was just the pair of them, to no avail. Was it Lance's fault? It seemed that being Lance-like involved some level of selfishness, so perhaps he hadn't wanted to help Shiro so much as he believed he had. Maybe he just wanted to be closer to him. Maybe he wanted Shiro's attention only because Keith had it. Could that have been why Shiro had kept his distance from Lance? Because he knew that Lance's motives were suspect?

He was starting to feel a little sick again.

The soft warmth across his shoulders tightened, pulling him flush against the body next to him and dragging his mind screaming back to his body from whatever star field it had wandered into. He flinched violently, stumbling and nearly falling over.

"Hey hey, whoa!" Hunk made sure he was upright before placing only his hand lightly on Lance's shoulder. Lance felt hyper aware of the warmth through his shirt. "Sorry! Sorry, you just... I know you miss him and you looked so sad." His voice was laced with so much worry and... pity? Lance couldn't always tell, but he thought that was pity in Hunk's voice. "So I was going to hug you. I didn't realise you'd zoned out."

Had he really looked sad? Lance didn't think he felt sad, just sick and self loathing.

Lance shook his head and smiled, remembering to crinkle his eyes up slightly when he did, to make the grin look more real. The move felt slightly unnatural at the moment, but Lance was pretty sure he'd have it again soon.

"Sorry, bro. I'm still a little out of it." He said carefully, each word thought out and strung together precisely before it was spoken. The words and smile didn't seem to alleviate Hunk's worry any and Lance was starting to feel increasingly uncomfortable with being looked at. His gaze dropped to the floor, hoping that Hunk would stop looking at him with so much pity.

"Food and sleep, yeah?" Lance said to the ground. 

Hunk sighed and flexed his hand against Lance's shoulder. "...Helps with most things." he said. 

Lance chanced a quick glance up, catching a brief, tired smile before Hunk turned and continued leading him to the kitchen.

* * *

The knock on the door startled Lance, making him realise suddenly that he'd been standing in the center of his room and staring at the wall since Hunk had reluctantly left him. It must have been a few minutes now, but he had no idea why he'd stopped moving or what he'd been doing.

Shaking himself, he deliberately turned to the door, moving towards it and standing in front of it for another long moment, trying to open the door by moving the muscles out past his chest, where the door now was. Of course that didn't work. It took Lance another too-long moment to remember that he needed to open the door with a button. He reached out to tap the button properly this time and the door slid open to reveal Coran on the other side.

"Sorry, I hope I didn't wake you," the Altean said in place of a greeting. Lance stared blankly for a moment before answering with a careful shake of his head. It felt exceptionally weird to be in his room and see Coran. Coran generally didn't come near the paladin's sleeping quarters.

Lance's surprise visitor gave him an uncomfortably thoughtful look. Lance could feel it running over his face and neck, scratching at his skin. Nothing was said for a long tick. He was aware that he should say something to fill the silence somehow, but nothing came to mind. In the end, it was Coran who broke the stalemate by handing him a small bag.

"I found your little book of paper while I was cleaning... ah, everything," Coran began. "Figured you might want it back."

Huh. That might explain why his room looked so much cleaner than it was when he'd left.

Lance opened the bag, spotting his spiral bound note book, his well-chewed pen, and a flat, roughly A5-sized item. That note book had been one of the few things he'd had on him when Blue had warped the team from Earth to the Castle of Lions. Carrying that thing around had been a habit he'd picked up from his mom, who had always insisted that you should carry a pen and paper at all times.

Since arriving at the castle, he'd been using it to write down random things that he either didn't want Pidge to find or that worked better when he was writing them out by hand. It mostly contained his bored scribbles, angry scrawling, random phrases, and song lyrics he was trying to remember; those went into the book for the latter reason. On the other hand, his personal training schedule and the times that it was easiest to access the gun range were written by hand to prevent them from being found by anyone else. He'd then torn that page out and stuck it to the wall beside his pillow.

Curiously, he pulled out the remaining item. It was blue, with the aeroplane V-shape that adorned the front of their armour across it in white.

"I also noticed that it was getting kind of full, so I grabbed something similar from the remaining stationary supplies." Coran explained cheerfully. "Which reminds me - that's a nice picture of Shiro in there. Was that the uniform of your military?"

"You read the note book," Lance stated. It wasn't a question, since he knew that the answer was obviously 'yes'. Coran had to be referring to the promotional picture of Shiro that the press had taken before the Kerberos mission. It was stuck to one of the front pages, surrounded by Lance's scrawls. 

"Of course!" Coran responded enthusiastically before looking thoughtful. "Should I have not done that?"

Lance shrugged. To be fair, it was just a notebook. It wasn't anything too secret, just... embarrassing? At least, Lance thought it should be embarrassing, especially if Coran had read far enough to find the picture that Lance had tucked away in the back cover. It had been taken the first time he had met Shiro, back when he'd applied to the Garrison's mentorship program. Lance remembered that day well- It also marked the first time he'd lost to Keith. He'd never shown those pictures to anyone, least of all Shiro. Lance was positive that Shiro would either decide that Lance was a crazy fanboy or the reminder of who he'd been before the Galra took him would depress him. Besides, Shiro didn't remember meeting Lance all those years ago. He was apparently not as memorable as he'd always thought he was.

There were also those photo booth pictures of himself and Hunk stuck in there, if Lance remembered. Pictures of his family that weren't on his phone had been removed and stuck on the wall, so they were probably the only photos still in there. Lance tried to remember if he had any unflattering doodles of Coran in there as well before giving up.

He didn't really feel anything one way or another. A numbness had spread over his whole body since he'd stepped back into his room.

Lance ran his hands over the new rectangular object. The cover felt smooth under his fingers, kind of like satin. Standing in the doorway and stroking stationary was not exactly a normal thing to do, so he ran his hands around the edge to try to work out how to open it. It opened up like a book after only a moment, revealing extremely thin but still somehow opaque white pages covered in a precise, aqua-blue grid.

A notebook. It really was an actual notebook.

"I would prefer it if you all talked about whatever it is that goes on in your tiny human heads," Coran explained, mostly talking to himself. "But since none of you are going to do **that** anytime soon, maybe you can write down the things that are bothering you. Perhaps that will be enough for you to stop going off and trying to prove..." He closed his eyes and shook his head, trailing off.

Lance felt his vision blur and worried for a moment that he was going to pass out or something. He'd eaten already, and green goo had never tasted so good to him. He'd drunk some of that slightly mineral-tasting water that they had on the castle, so he wasn't dehydrated. Was he really tired? He didn't feel so tired that he'd faint.

Drops of water fell from the tip of his nose, splattering on the cover of the new notebook. Tears? His tears. He was crying.

All at once he became aware of a howling, aching emptiness in his chest that was being filled to overflowing by an endless spring of hurt that welled up inside of him. It felt sudden and quick, but he hadn't even been aware of the pain until it reached a tipping point and began flooding the rest of his body.

Lance stepped cautiously backwards, legs shaking under him, looking for something to prop himself up against before giving up and sitting heavily on the ground. Coran made a startled noise, on him in a moment, tipping his head back as though checking for injury.

Lance squeezed his eyes shut to avoid having to look. "Sorry," he squeaked out. "I- I don't-" an ugly sob interrupted his voice, throat closing up around the words, "why'm I crying."

"It's been a stressful kaginent for all of us," Coran assured him. "Heck, longer than that. And you..." Lance felt the Altean's hand stroke over his head, letting go of his face so that he could let it drop back to his chest. He struggled to hear Coran's voice over the horrible noises he couldn't stop himself from making. "It's been stressful for you for a long time now, hasn't it?"

Lance didn't know what to say to that. If he was crying, then he must deserve to be sad. He was captured because he deserved to be captured. He was ignored because he wasn't good enough or brave enough to be listened to, so he deserved to be ignored. He deserved to be replaced. Right? Lance wasn't sure when he'd started thinking that... Was it new?

"It's okay to cry. It's okay to be scared, or relieved, or a mixture of everything." Coran shifted to sit next to him. "As long as you have the time for it and remember to pick yourself back up and get back to the fight. Zarkon is gone, but there's still a lot too do. The universe still needs Voltron."

The universe needed Voltron. Lance had to get it together. He'd sleep in his bed, go to training tomorrow, and everything would go back to how it was supposed to be. Well... Not exactly, but everything would go back to how it had been before Lance got himself captured, like the idiot he was. He would just work a little harder, push a little further, try a little more to fit right. Voltron was more important than his feelings. Voltron was more important than Lance the individual.

As quickly as they started, Lance's tears stopped. He wiped at his face, scrubbing away the water stains on his skin.

"Feeling better?" Coran asked. 

Lance didn't feel anything at all. He didn't like the feeling much, but he supposed it was better than feeling sad, wasn't it? He made a small "hmm" noise that Coran at least took for agreement.

"Okay. Get some rest." Coran pet Lance's shoulder twice and stood up. "I need to get back to the bridge. Call up there if you need to."

Lance made that same humming noise that signaled agreement before backing it up with "Yeah. Okay."

He stood to see Coran out of the room, already well aware that he would not be calling for anyone whether he needed to or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something of a cool down and intermediate chapter to act as an insight into Lance's mind.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> Lance is returned to the remaining Paladins, but all is not well with him. Physically he seems fine, still in good health and mostly uninjured.
> 
> Mentally it's another story, as he struggles to keep track of his own emotions, talk to others, focus on things happening around him, or even keep his thoughts in order.

The next day arrived too soon. Lance had curled up in his bed with his eye-mask off, his lights on, and his night cream over his face, loving the contrast of cooling cream and warm blankets. Or really any kind of temperature diference. He'd had music on for a while, but the sound was... still a little overwhelming. Pop music was way too much and even the orchestral stuff was a little too stimulating at first. Piano-and-violin-only covers were just perfect and he'd fallen asleep listening to a piano rendition of some old video game music. He'd slept lightly, waking up every couple of hours from dreams of emptiness or fields of lightning or hyper-vivid visions, and every time it took him a little while to break free of the dream and convince himself that he wasn't trapped in the nothingness anymore, that all of this was real.

Hunk came to wake him up for breakfast the next designated-morning period, dragging Lance out of a half-asleep fugue. He couldn't be angry about it though, not when seeing Hunk at the door filled Lance with a rush of relief and sheer joy. He barely managed to bite back a delighted laugh, pouring that energy instead into a grin that made his face ache with it's sheer size. Seeing Hunk so damned pleased to see him certainly didn't hurt.

He didn't have as much of a handle on his emotions as he'd like, but it was getting better.

The walk to the kitchen and dining hall was silent. Normally, Lance would be able to fill the quiet with something, but it felt like it took a lot of energy to get his thoughts into order right at that moment. Who knew what might pour out of his mouth and how much sense it would make? Food first, then he'd have the energy for thinking and words. He'd be able to be more himself, or whoever it was that Voltron needed, after breakfast.

Keith was already in the kitchen when they arrived, frowning at a bowl of green goo with brown flakes throughout that gave the goo a crunchier texture instead of the smooth, pudding-like texture it usually had. He looked up at their entrance, face smoothing out into a soft smile when his eyes fell on the pair of them.

"Morning," he greeted them with a slight nod and Lance nodded in return.

"Morning. Seen Pidge yet?" Hunk asked, easily bustling past the table to the hoses. Oh, right. Lance realised he should say something too.

"M'rning," Lance mumbled. He could do better than that. He cleared his throat and tried again, focusing on speaking clearly and naturally. "What is on for the day?"

Nailed it.

Keith sent Lance a surprised look, eyes scanning over him quickly. Okay, so Lance _thought_ he'd nailed it, but maybe he hadn't? Did the words coming out of his mouth not make sense?

"You were acting pretty vague yesterday," Keith pointed out, searching Lance's face for something. Lance would normally answer with something witty, but while his thoughts seemed just as fast as usual, they hadn't quite reached their standard wit or coherence. Deciding to try a novel tactic instead, Lance didn't say anything and waited for Keith to try and fill in the silence.

Keith broke before Lance did, which was a new result too. Lance mentally crowned himself the victor in this little breakfast battle of wills. He'd have to try using that tactic again later.

"There's no mission planned," Keith turned back to his bowl of food, picking up his discarded spoon. "But Allura hasn't called off morning drills. You can teach us how you changed the shape of your Bayard."

Lance had no idea what Keith was talking about. And on top of that, when had Lance ever taught anyone anything? How was he going to do that?

"You changed the shape of your Bayard?" Hunk asked, returning to the table with two plates, both containing something that looked almost like toast (aside from being dark green) that had been covered with various edible things that Hunk had collected.

Lance had completely forgotten to go and get himself food. Food had been the entire point, and most of what was on his mind on the way here, but it had completely slipped his mind as soon as he'd walked into the room. Now he just felt silly, even as Hunk handed him the second plate. He carefully picked up the toast, taking a moment to calculate exactly how much he could realistically shove into his face in one bite. 

Silence fell across the table as Lance focused on biting into Hunk's crunchy but slightly chewy creation. He could see Keith glance down at the brunette's plate before sharing a look with Hunk, but he didn't pay it much mind. Keith was probably just wishing Hunk had fixed him breakfast too.

"It became two pistols instead of a single rifle." Keith said, breaking the silence. Lance looked between the other two Paladins, wondering what he'd missed.

"Wait, you split a single Bayard into two guns?" Hunk sounded impressed. "How?"

Oh yeah, he had done that, hadn't he? 

Lance shrugged. "Ump-fumf-" He began, before remembering that he had a mouthful of food. He chewed and swallowed as quickly as he could. "I just... um." He took a moment to gather his thoughts, holding both hands out in front of him like he was holding an invisible rifle. "I just flexed the muscles out past my hands, without moving anything else."

He was met with twin bemused looks from Keith and Hunk.

"That literally makes no sense," Hunk said after spending what felt like far too long staring at Lance.

"That's how I did it," Lance shrugged, resting his arms back on the table. 

Hunk pulled a face at him. "Are you sure it's not just something you did by concentrating really hard?" he asked. "'Cause most things to do with the Lions seems to involve concentrating really hard and I can probably find a way to concentrate harder."

"I... guess?" Lance scrunched up his face in thought. "Concentrating to move only one thing without moving any other part of you?"

"That sounds like a koan," Keith observed. 

Lance gave his plate a vacant look as he tried to apply a shape to what he was trying to describe, to see if it was especially conical. "I don't think it actually has a shape," he said eventually.

"What?" Keith asked, frustration bleeding into the word. 

Lance pulled himself back out of his own head. "What?"

"No, I asked what." Keith said. 

Lance narrowed his eyes at Keith and tried to replay the conversation back over in his head. He was starting to feel light and excited, but also tired and irritated. It was complicated. Thankfully, Pidge finally arrived in the kitchen, giving Lance a reasonable excuse not to answer. Her eyes were still heavy with sleep, a frown etched into her forehead and a data pad clutched to her chest. She scanned the room quickly, scowl softening as she offered Lance a genuinely relieved smile.

Lance was struggling to remember the last time he'd seen her smile at him like that. Before Shiro's disappearance, he thought. It was nice to be smiled at again.

"Lance!" Pidge exclaimed. "Good, you're up and about. Feeling..." she hesitated, struggling to find the right word to sum up what she wanted to ask before settling on "Better?"

"Yes," Lance responded honestly. He had no idea when yesterday started, but he was willing to bet that yesterday morning he was trapped in an endless nothingness, unsure if he was alive or dead, with absolutely no hope. Yesterday ended with him throwing up, forcing food into his stomach and crying on the floor. This morning, he was in the castle's kitchen and eating food without nausea, ready to try to make up for whatever time he'd lost in training. Determined to do whatever was best for Voltron. "Infinitely better."

Pidge placed her tablet on the table and pulled him into a hug. Lance tried not to flinch away, despite his skin feeling unsure whether the contact with Pidge was too much or not enough. He could feel a painful cocktail of terror, worry and relief rushing over him so strongly that it robbed him of words or the ability to react, but he couldn't quite work out why. 

"If you ever do something like that again, I'll taser you so hard that you'll be twitching for weeks." Lance could hear the sound of tears only just held back in Pidge's voice. "You're not some damned lone hero, understood?"

Lance was tempted to cry on her behalf, but managed to stop himself. He couldn't find the words to tell Pidge that he was perfectly aware that he really wasn't very good at being a hero. He'd had little else to think about except that he'd been captured for failing at being one so spectacularly. He settled on nodding instead, hoping that she might understand.

* * *

Keith wasn't sure how Allura got 'You must think of the Bayard as an extension of your own body' out of Lance's description, but Keith wasn't going to complain too much. She seemed far too excited that someone had reached that level of understanding.

"I don't get it," Hunk pouted at his Bayard in defeat. "How do you make yourself see a B.F.G. as an extension of yourself?"

Keith knew how he felt. "I think of my Bayard as an extension of my body," he shrugged, still focusing on the sword in his hands. "What's a B.F.G.?"

"A Big Frikkin Gun, only they don't usually say frikkin." Hunk sighed and sat back. "You having more luck?"

"No. It's not working for me either." Keith felt himself scowling and deliberately relaxed his face. They'd been working at this exercise for hours now. They'd done it with and without neural enhancers. Keith had tried on both the red _and_ the black Bayard. He still felt like he was no closer to success. "My luxite blade reacts to my thoughts intuitively when I'm holding it, depending on whether I want a sword or a dagger. I've tried doing the same thing here, but I get nothing."

He suspected that a big part of why he couldn't get his Bayard to change shape was that he really only wanted it to be a sword. He liked having a sword, they just made sense to him. Maybe if he tried for something like a whip-sword, similar to how Zarkon had shaped his Bayard? The thought of making a weapon that looked anything like Zarkon's sent an unpleasant trickle of distaste through him. That wasn't going to work for him either.

He looked up to where Lance and Pidge were hovering around the edge of the gun range. Pidge had managed to convince her Bayard to change it's form fairly quickly, shaping it into into a device that clamped to her arm and fired a rather terrifying bladed energy boomerang. It didn't seem to want to stay in that form for long, but it was still an impressive start.

Beside her, Lance was staring vacantly into the middle distance, a light frown over his features. Again. 

It seemed like Lance was doing that every second time Keith looked up, and at least once he'd been convinced that Lance was about to burst into tears. It didn't seem normal for the blue paladin to be so spaced out and it was worrying Keith. At least, He didn't think it was normal. Lance had certainly tuned out before during training or discussions, so he might not actually be doing it any more than he usually did. Still, he'd been put in charge of assisting the other members of Voltron in something and that was usually enough to hold all of his focus. Maybe Keith was just being paranoid, or maybe he was just paying a lot more attention to Lance's whereabouts than he typically did, looking over at the blue paladin constantly to make sure he was still exactly where Keith had left him and hadn't vanished somehow.

When he thought about it like that, Keith felt extra stupid. Lance wasn't exactly going to vanish into thin air in the middle of the Castle. Outside of his Lion, at least. But Keith could not handle another team member going missing or being abducted or whatever might happen. He just couldn't do it again, not so soon.

Yeah, he was definitely feeling a bit paranoid right now. 

Pidge whooped in victory as her boomerang sliced through the target neatly and returned to her arm without her having to race after it. Lance jumped visibly at the sound, looking around like he expected an attack before focusing back onto Pidge. Pidge held her fist in front of her, a move that even Keith (now) knew meant she was requesting a fist bump.

Lance stared at her for what felt like far too long before gently obliging her, pressing his fist forwards to barely brush against the front of her fingers. Pidge glanced down at her hand and back up to Lance, confusion visible on her face even from where Keith sat. Lance failing to provide a fist-bump on request was definitely out of character, a fact that the brunet seemed to remember shortly after when he punched Pidge playfully in the arm. He said something that pulled Pidge's attention back to the present moment and she smiled in return, body posture still tense and anxious, but slowly relaxing. Lance's body language sank into something more normal and it was like nothing had changed again. 

That switch between 'completely normal' and 'staring vacantly while lost in his own thoughts' did nothing to alleviate Keith's worries. No matter how much Lance insisted that no one had touched him or asked him questions or threatened him... Surely something had to have happened. Otherwise, things made no sense. Even if Coran assured Keith that Lance had nothing foreign in his system, he'd _seen_ the puncture marks on the back of Lance's neck. Something had been done to Lance and Keith wanted to know who to hurt for it. But if Lance maintained that nothing had happened, then there wasn't much Keith could really do.

"You won't be able to shape your Bayard into something new if you're mind is elsewhere." Allura's voice cut over his thoughts. 

Keith leaned back against the chair's backrest, tilting his head just far enough to bring Allura into view. Beside him, Hunk also leaned back, rolling his neck with several cracking pops to stretch out the muscles that had cramped up after spending so long staring down at his lap.

"I also won't be able to change it to something else when the only thing I want it to be is a sword," Keith said. 

Allura chuckled lightly. "Have you considered, perhaps, a different kind of sword? Maybe a scimitar?"

Keith was positive that he was staring at her like an idiot. That never even occurred to him. "Huh."

Hunk hid his chuckling behind his hand and Allura gave the yellow paladin a conspiratorial grin, as though both of them knew exactly what was going through his mind. Allura then turned her attention over to the gun range, her expression softening into something more nervous and thoughtful. Keith followed Allura's line of sight over to Pidge and Lance.

"You're still worried," she observed, her tone gentle. 

Keith shrugged, not sure how to answer that.

"Lance has been a bit spacey this morning," Hunk said, worry edging into his voice. "More than usual, I mean. Last time he was like this he'd stayed up all night working on his application essay for the fighter pilot program." 

Allura hummed thoughtfully at this information. "The way you described the chamber you found him in sounds a little bit like some of the old stasis technology." She tapped at her chin as she searched through her memories. "Waking up from stasis is a bit confusing for everyone and most people are a little disoriented and unsteady on their feet first thing. Some people took a lot longer to shake off the effects, becoming confused and sluggish for a day or two before they really woke up. It happened much less as the technology improved."

"Is that what you think Lance has at the moment?" Hunk asked. "Some kind of stasis-lag?"

Keith watched Allura out of the corner of his eye as she tilted her head towards Hunk, confused. "Lag?" she asked, before shaking her head, putting that question aside. "Humans are very different to Alteans, mentally and physically, and it might not have been a stasis device. But if it is something similar then Lance only needs a little time to fully wake up. There's no reason to worry over anything just yet."

Allura didn't sound like she completely believed her own theory, but Keith still thought that it was worth keeping in mind. Even if Lance wasn't experiencing some kind of stasis-lag, Allura was probably right about him just needing some time.

"Anyway, I think that's enough for now." Allura turned to Keith, nominally deferring to his opinion. "Why don't we break for Lunch?" 

Hunk immediately perked up at the idea, and Keith nodded his agreement, putting aside any lingering doubts. It was too early to worry yet.

* * *

Pidge's voice and the smell of a cooked breakfast greeted Keith upon entering the kitchen early the next morning, indicating that both Pidge and Hunk were up and about much earlier than usual. This time was usually just for Keith.

"-nd I have no idea how long he was there," Pidge sat up on the island counter, elbows resting on her knees as she spoke over the sound of Hunk frying something. "It was like he hadn't even noticed! That's not normal, right?"

Keith stopped, unsure whether the pair had noticed him in the kitchen yet. It couldn't be that private a conversation if they were having it here and he wanted water from the cool-room tap behind them. Besides, whatever Hunk was frying smelt pretty good.

"What're you cooking?" He asked, walking over to the pair and trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was in the pan. 

Hunk was still in his pyjamas, right down to those Yellow Lion slippers. He was missing his usual cooking bandanna as well, meaning that his hair flopped over his forehead more than usual in the heat of the stove top. He looked far younger than normal to Keith; it was kind of cute.

"No idea," Hunk replied, throwing something else in. "I just figured that whatever it was, it'd taste good fried."

Pidge looked back over her shoulder at him, offering a quick nod of acknowledgement before turning back to Hunk. Unlike Hunk, she was still dressed in her casual clothes, her only concession to the early hours being a pair of warm socks with a gaudy knitted print on it that she wore instead of her usual socks and shoes.

"Why are you two up so early?" Keith asked, pausing for a moment before adding, "Tell me that you at least went to sleep last night. Pidge?"

"Hey!" Pidge grumbled and poked Keith in the forehead. "I slept, thank you very much."

"In your bed?" Keith raised an eyebrow at Pidge.

Pidge huffed and crossed her arms, scowling at the far wall. "Sure, change the parameters."

There was a beat of silence filled only with the sizzling of food. Hunk yawned and gave the pan a halfhearted flip. "I'm up because Pidge woke me up."

Keith sent a questioning look to Pidge's back until her shoulders relaxed and she shifted her position on the counter to include him in the conversation. He liked to imagine that Pidge now knew instinctively when he wanted to ask her a question, but that might have just been wishful thinking.

"I fell asleep in the lounge room," she admitted apprehensively, "but I was going back to my room to catch a few hours of in-bed sleep. I just ended up seeing Lance instead."

Keith gave Pidge a confused frown. "He's up too?"

"He was when I saw him," Pidge said with a shrug before continuing, leaning towards Keith as though sharing something she wasn't sure she was supposed to share. "The thing was, he was just kind staring out the window. I figured that this time I'd be the one to interrupt what he was doing and force him to go to bed. 'Turn about is fair play' and all that." She hunched over and put her elbows back on her knees. "But when I walked over to him, he was crying."

Keith's confused frown deepened, in danger of becoming a scowl. "Why?"

Pidge replied with a vexed groan. "I asked him! I said 'Hey, what are you doing up so early and why are you crying?' And he acted all surprised at both the time and the fact that he had full on tears running down his face!" She threw her arms up in frustration before bringing them down to cross over her stomach and continuing in a quieter voice. "Then he asked me if I thought he was selfish."

Silence fell again. Even the sizzling of the food seemed to be muted. "What did you tell him?" Keith asked when it seemed like Pidge wasn't going to continue.

Pidge looked offended. "Of _course_ I told him that I didn't think he was selfish at all!"

"He is though," Keith felt like he had to point out. "Or, maybe more self absorbed than selfish."

"Yeah, but you don't tell a person who's crying that you think they're probably not selfish so much as narcissistic." Pidge rolled her eyes.

"Okay." Keith wasn't sure he understood. If Lance was upset, even if it was actually about realising he might be selfish, why lie to him about it? How was he supposed to stop being the thing he didn't want to be if people told him that he already wasn't the thing he didn't want to be? Or something like that.

"I walked him to his room, then I left him there and went to get Hunk for help." Pidge said, frowning at the counter. "He wasn't there when we got back though."

Hunk just nodded to that, biting his lip.

"Why did you need Hunk?" Keith couldn't help but ask.

Pidge hesitated before answering. "I was worried. I mean, he was a prisoner two days ago, and now he's crying at windows in the early hours of the morning. Is that normal? I don't know, I'm not great with people and feelings and stuff. I never saw Shiro crying at windows, so maybe that's just a Lance thing. Maybe it's completely normal, maybe it's not and I should be doing something. So I figured, 'Hey, Hunk knows Lance better than I do, he'll know how to make him happy again.' And I kind of forgot exactly how early it was," she finished apologetically.

"It's fine," Hunk waved her apology away with a spatula. "I'm glad you came and got me."

"Except now I have no idea where he wandered off to. He's not where I left him, where I found him the first time, in the rec room or with the Lions, and I haven't actually put a tracker on him yet."

"You could do that?" Keith asked, trying not to sound too pleased by the prospect. That was a dangerous path to start walking down.

"No," Hunk spoke before Pidge had a chance to comment. "No trackers without his consent."

"Can we put a tracker on you at least?" Keith didn't bother trying to keep the hope out of his voice that time. It might not prevent members of Voltron from disappearing, but he'd take every precaution he was allowed to, even if he did feel a little bit Big Brother-y for asking them to wear trackers.

Hunk stopped his movements, giving the prospect some thought. "I think I'm okay with that," he eventually decided before taking the pan off of the heat.

Keith smiled and gave Hunk a thankful nod. A thoughtful silence descended upon the room until Hunk placed a large plate of fried food in front of them, handing the other two paladins a fork. "I promised I wouldn't tell you this," he said, picking up something that was a dull blue with a golden brown crust and sniffing at it, "but I decided last night I was going to say it anyway." He paused long enough to pop the cube of food into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully before nodding his head, satisfied by it's taste. 

Keith and Pidge both took that as their cue to start eating. The taste wasn't quite like anything Keith had eaten before, but it was good. Just the right kind of crispy and seasoned on the outside and soft on the inside.

"Yesterday, Lance and I were training at the shooting gallery," Hunk said.

"You mean the range that the training room can generate?" Pidge sounded surprised. "I thought Keith was there that afternoon."

"I was." Keith confirmed, electing not to mention that he'd been in the training room to begin with so that he didn't start following Hunk and Lance around the castle. "I didn't see either of you."

"No, I mean like... an actual shooting gallery. But I can't tell you where it is, because Lance swore me to secrecy." Hunk said, pausing long enough to bite into another fried cube. "Apparently Lance goes there to train pretty regularly."

"Lance trains?" Keith asked incredulously, fork halfway to his mouth. "On his own? Outside of team training times?"

"Yeah," Hunk replied with a shrug. "He's got a schedule in his room and everything. I checked the settings after the... uh, the incident. He's logged a _lot_ of hours there."

"How can I not have known about this?" Pidge asked, voice pitched up in annoyance. "I'm always in the system! I practically _am_ the system. I would have noticed that much activity."

Keith narrowed his eyes at Pidge, unwilling to speak with his mouth full of food. That was _not_ the most important part of Hunk's statement.

"He unplugged the network cable." Hunk replied.

"Dammit," Pidge grumbled.

Keith swallowed as quickly as he could without choking. "What 'incident'?" He asked, pulling the focus back to the part of the conversation he felt was more important than whether or not Lance knew how to unplug a cable.

Hunk placed his fork down and folded his arms on the table, leaning on them heavily. "Right, the incident. I thought training was going pretty well. I'm not sure what happened. Lance promised he'd set the system to go easy, but I was kind of distracted with trying not to get shot. He promised that the drones couldn't actually damage you or anything, but _man_ they hurt like hell when they hit."

Pidge opened her mouth to ask another question and Keith cut her off with as stern a glare as he could manage. Given the way she had to hide a snicker behind a hand, he didn't think it was terribly effective as a glare. He speared another cube of fried food and returned his focus to Hunk, Pidge copying a moment later.

"I saw Lance move to dodge the laser fire, but then he just kind of... dropped." Hunk continued nervously, either not noticing the exchange or choosing to ignore it. He bit his lip again in thought. "Not unconscious or anything, just to his knees. I thought maybe he'd been knocked off balance or something, but he didn't finish falling, or even flinch when the drones kept hitting him. And I'm serious, those things _hurt_.

"I went over to him, and he was mumbling stuff. I only caught some of it, but it sounded like one of those angry pep-talks he gives himself sometimes." Hunk looked lost in thought for a moment as he focused inwards on the memory, mumbling, "I think he might have said 'Voltron is more important', something about stars and the dark, and something about 'deserving this'. I'm positive I heard him say Shiro's name too. Nothing about being selfish though," he finished with a sigh, hands squeezing at his arms in worry. "He didn't answer me right away when I spoke. He was shaking really bad though, hard enough to rattle his armour. He didn't snap out of it until I took his bayard out of his hand."

"Why am I only hearing about this now?" Keith huffed, trying his best not to pout. If he hadn't wandered in on this early morning gossip session, would he have been told at all?

Hunk looked away awkwardly and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Lance kind of made me swear not to tell anyone. He said it was just an adrenaline spike that he didn't have enough energy for yet. I thought it sounded reasonable at the time, but then I was thinking about it last night and it didn't seem to stand up."

Keith could help but agree. Perhaps Keith personally didn't know Lance as well as he'd thought - Lance keeping his preferred training spot secret didn't actually surprise him much, it was just annoying that he hadn't known about it at all - but he trusted that Hunk knew Lance.

"So I was planning to try to talk _Lance_ into telling you today," Hunk finished, sounding like he had complete faith in his ability to do just that.

Okay, so maybe there were some things about Lance that Keith knew better. Even he could tell that there was no way that would work.

Pidge scowled and violently speared a deep blue fried morsel with her fork. "Nothing happened my ass," she grumbled. "Those so-called scientists did something." She shoved the food into her mouth and chewed aggressively.

Keith recognised the expression on Pidge's face - that was her 'determined to get some answers' look. He'd seen it enough times now to know: when she told the team that she was leaving to find her family, when she was trying to code her way around alien security systems, when she proposed that they go somewhere specific for information, or when she'd almost growled at him that she was going to work out what had happened to Shiro. Keith admired and dreaded that look in equal measures. 

"Pidge, don't do this again," Hunk begged, voice quiet. 

Pidge blinked in surprise before turning to face Hunk fully. Even Keith found himself staring at Hunk, unsure what he was getting at.

"Don't get obsessed, " Hunk said "Lance says that nothing happened, so just believe him. Maybe something happened that he doesn't remember or he doesn't want to talk about yet. Maybe nothing at all happened and being captured for ten days and left completely alone with nothing actually happening was- was enough to shake him up. It doesn't matter." Hunk took a breath and turned pleading, watery eyes on Pidge. "Just be a friend and team-mate, please?"

Pidge's expression faltered, and Keith felt the tension that had taken hold of him flow away. No one could withstand Hunk when he unleashed those big, stupid, adorable puppy-dog eyes.

"Okay, okay," Pidge sighed, caving in. "No more obsessions. But I'm still going to look over the data I grabbed from the Mad Science Atlantis and I'm still going to keep up my projects. But I won't make them my main focus any more."

Hunk beamed at her. "I'll take that compromise and call it a win."

Keith chuckled and took a moment to enjoy the companionable silence that followed as the three of them continued eating. There really was nothing like a shared problem to bring people together and it had been more than a few weeks since the three of them had been together like this peacefully. All that was missing right now was Lance.

He was about to say as much when sirens began blaring through the castle. Pidge hopped off the counter, quick as a flash and ran for the hallway.

"No!" Hunk whined, looking at the plate of food even as he began moving for the door. "Aw, we were having a moment! And we haven't even finished eating yet!"

Keith pet him on the shoulder and ran past him, heading for the armoury, his mind already switching over to battle mode. Right now, there was a mission to focus on. Personal problems could come later.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> Lance is not doing well after his ten days of capture, and everyone knows it. But what are they going to about it? Unfortunately, any discussions about Lance are going to have to wait until after the paladins deal with whatever emergency triggered the alarms.

The room was still down one member when Lance arrived only moments after the rest of the paladins.

"Allura isn't here yet?" Pidge asked, looking around the room as though expecting her to jump out from behind a console.

"What? No! I suggested she get some sleep," Coran replied. "She doesn't actually sleep in the command room, you know."

"She doesn't?" Hunk asked, sounding confused and half asleep.

Lance could relate, even if he'd been up hours now and definitely hadn't been sleeping when the alarm went off. He knew he should sleep. He was tired, and the more tired he got the more likely he was to get lost in his own head. The more stuck in his own thoughts he was, the more he felt like he might try to walk somewhere and accidentally leave his body behind. But he could feel the empty void creeping towards him whenever he closed his eyes, he could feel that ocean of dark stars and the complete numbness within it.

What was happening again? Oh, right. They were waiting for Allura to appear. He thought about making a comment about her being late, but Allura ran into the room, decked out in her battle suit, before anything came to mind. 

Her long legs carried her quickly to stand beside Coran at the main console. "My apologies, I'm here," she said to the assembled paladins before turning to Coran. "What's happening?"

Coran took that as his cue to turn back to the console and bring up the view screen. "We've just received a string of distress beacons from nearby systems. They're coming in fast, and most troubling of all, they're all in a line." He moved his hands swiftly over the console, bringing up several messages. "We've only managed to get some quick reports from our allies in the area. It looks like one of Zarkon's Lieutenants has had ships raiding every planet in it's path on their way back into Galra controlled space."

"Zarkon is gone," Keith pointed out, stepping closer to the console. His eyes scanned over the sparse information displayed.

"Apparently, this guy and his company have been out on the edges of the empire, expanding into new worlds. He might have only just received a recall order. At least one report suggests he's going back to meet up with Zarkon's eldest son to join his fleet." Coran flipped through a couple of short messages on the screen. "They're razing everything in their path, so we don't have a lot of information to go on."

Keith and Allura nodded decisively, almost in perfect synchronisation. It was weird how that happened, Lance thought.

"Alright," Allura stepped up to the console, flicking the controls over. "Work out where their next target will be, given their trajectory. We'll Teludav to that system first to halt their progress. If they haven't left their last target by the time we get there, we'll move to intercept them further back along their path."

"Understood." Keith turned to the team. "Get to the Lions and get ready for launch. We still don't have Voltron, but between our Lions and the castle we have enough firepower to take down most ships."

"Roger," Pidge responded, already heading to her zip-line.

Hunk saluted and made his way to his own zip-line with a sour look on his face. He really did hate the access chutes. Lance turned to do the same, only to be stopped by a hand on his shoulder.

"Lance, I want you to hang back," Keith said. "Stay near the castle and use long range fire only."

Lance felt a shock of indignation prickling along his spine. "Why?" 

"Because your head hasn't been in the right space since you got back," Keith growled, stepping closer to Lance than normal and fixing him with a sharp, narrowed-eyed look. "I'm not sending you out out there to be a big blue target because you zone out in the middle of a fire fight. We're down a pilot already, I'm not making that two pilots and a lion."

A complicated set of emotions ran through Lance, waves of ice through his blood chased by a fire that burned just under his skin. Cold shock at being called out when he thought he'd been keeping it together when Keith was around. Burning fury at being all but sidelined by _Keith_ , as though he was of absolutely no use to the team. Cold anxiety that Keith might be right, that the adrenaline alone wouldn't be enough to keep both his mind and body in the fight and he'd end up in that void of darkness again. Burning shame that he couldn't seem to keep it together or think fast enough to be on active duty. 

Cold terror. Burning resolve. All of it conspired to rob him of words, leaving him gasping and floundering uselessly like a caught fish as he struggled for a response. He wanted to lay all of that anger, hurt, fear and shame onto something outside of himself, someone he could confront and at least symbolically stand up to and overcome. It felt like he'd done that before without even needing to think about it, but now that he was aware that this was what he wanted, he couldn't work out how he'd managed it in the past.

"Understood?" Keith asked, eyes searching Lance's own for something.

"Understood, _Sir._ " Lance responded, throwing as much venom as he could into his voice. It turned out there wasn't much of it inside him. Even to his own ears he sounded defeated and annoyed instead of defiant.

Keith fixed him with a focused stare a moment longer, then sighed and stepped back. Lance took that as his signal to leave and zip-line down to the Blue Lion.

His Lion was in sight before he realised that his response should have been 'Yeah, well I can probably snipe more enemies from here than you could cut down from up close anyway.' That would have been a good one.

The feeling of breaking through the surface of the ocean hit Lance as soon as he entered the cockpit, startling him enough that he almost fell out of his chair. He righted himself quickly as his seat slid into it's usual position, the lights of the controls turning on to greet him. Because of the blue lighting, Lance was unable to shake the feeling of being underwater. More than that, he could feel his Lion's presence surrounding him stronger than he ever had before. It was exhilarating, like flying and swimming at the same time. The water wasn't just inside Blue, the water _was_ Blue and Lance felt like he might just dissolve into it. Was that what it was like to fully connect with his Lion? He unconsciously opened his mind, encouraging the water to flow through him, fill up those empty spaces again, snuff out the burning parts like anger and thaw out the cold parts like fear. 

A wall of ice slammed into him, and the ocean around him misted away. Lance flinched back violently, kicking the controls in his moment of panic. The room around him went dark as everything powered down.

 _'Blue?'_ Lance reached out again, only to be met with more impenetrable ice and a field of dark stars that Lance was becoming worryingly familiar with

"Blue?!" Lance asked the darkness. "Blue, what's wrong? What's going on?" He began flipping at switches, struggling to get any response. Panic began to swell in his chest. "No, please! Don't freeze me out!"

_Please..._

* * *

"Do you see them?" Allura asked over the coms.

Keith flicked over a few more displays, checking his readings before locating what he was looking for. "Got them. They're approaching now. One large warship, three smaller carrier ships."

"And a mess of smaller fighters," Coran added. "I've got them on my scanners now too."

"Okay. Is everyone ready?" Keith asked, letting his mind slip fully into the upcoming fight, planning out possible attacks. He was in Black, so speed and power were on his side.

Hunk and Pidge both sent him an affirmation. Nothing came from Lance.

"Lance?" Keith asked, patching his video screen through to the Blue Lion. "Lance, are you in position? You-" He cut himself off, looking down at the darkened screen that showed the inside of the Blue Lion.

Lance was staring through him, face lit only by the light being emanated from his screen. It gave him a faint purple glow from below, washing his skin out and making him look eerie and unnatural. No other lights were on in the cockpit, and the only sound was Lance whispering "No" repeatedly under his breath and the creaking of his hands as they flexed on the controls.

"Lance?" Keith asked as more lights came on, lighting up the cockpit in several different colours.

"Lance, why haven't you launched yet?" Allura asked, cutting over the worried murmurs of the other paladins.

Lance's eyes focused on the screens, flicking between each one in quick succession. "I- It won't- Blue- I can't-" He cut himself off and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath in and slowly exhaling. When he opened his eyes again, his expression was carefully neutral, with none of the usual life or exaggerated expressions that he favoured. "I can't pilot Blue. She shut down, and she won't start up again."

The coms fell into stunned silence.

"What?" Allura broke the silence first, confusion seeping into her voice as it steadily rose in pitch. "No, that's- How could that happen? That shouldn't be possible!"

The dark cockpit replied far more eloquently than Lance ever could. Keith felt dread starting to claw its way up his throat, not helped by the sounds of Pidge and Hunk talking over each other. Lance winced at the noise on the screen in front of him, letting his eyes fall to his lap. Keith was struck with the ridiculous idea that Lance was ashamed.

"Squadron is closing in fast," Coran informed the team, voice cutting over the noise. "If I might make a suggestion?"

Allura shook herself out of her shock. "Coran, take over the ship's weapons," She ordered. "I'll head down to the Lion's hangers now and see what's happened to the Blue Lion."

Her view-screen flickered out in Keith's cockpit, indicating that she'd cut the feed to her terminal.

Coran puffed his cheeks out, expression caught somewhere between worry and annoyance. "Well then!" He said loudly. "Keith, what are your orders?"

Keith sighed. It really was up to him to make a decision here, whether he had any idea what to do or not. He'd made decisions with too little information before, he could treat this with the same kind of focus. "Get ready to fire on my mark," He instructed Coran before turning to the other view screens. "Pidge, cloak up and wait for my instructions. Hunk, stay with me until we see what their front lines look like. I might need you to act as a battering ram."

Both paladins acknowledged the order with an awkward somberness and switched off their view screens, Hunk with a last lingering look at where Keith assumed Lance was displayed.

"Lance," He paused, waiting for the Blue Paladin to lift his head.

"I'll head back up to the command room." Lance sounded resigned as he leaned back, hands sliding off the controls. "Allura can radio you once she gets Blue launched."

Perhaps it was a trick of the light, which was back to just being a single point of violet striking Lance from below, but the blue paladin looked fundamentally wrong. Keith couldn't remember ever seeing Lance look so resigned to anything.

"Okay," Keith agreed. What else could he do? He didn't know what to say.

Lance gave him a small, strained smile and stood, leaving the cockpit. Keith flicked the view screen off and turned his focus onto the approaching squadron. He could talk to Lance and try to work out what the hell was going on afterwards. For now, he could be patient. Everything else would have to wait until after the fight.

* * *

They won, but it was a close thing. If the warship hadn't fled when it had, or if the Blue Lion hadn't started up easily once Allura was in the pilot's seat, the result might have been different.

The Lions were barely back in their hangers before Allura grabbed Lance and insisted that he needed to be checked over again. Keith watched her lead Lance away as he informed her over and over that she wouldn't find anything. Keith quietly hoped that Lance was wrong about that. If the scans found something then at least they'd have a clear problem that could be solved, something that wasn't just inside Lance's head. But all the tests backed up Lance's assessment. He was physically fine, he was even doing _better_ on synchronisation tests than usual.

Allura let Lance go eventually, frustration bleeding into her voice as she gave Keith the verdict. "Nothing's wrong. Which doesn't make sense, because a Lion doesn't completely shut down because nothing is wrong."

Keith felt like a scowl was starting to become his default expression. "It has to just be something you can't test for," he said. "Something psychological."

Allura pushed her hair back behind her ear, eyes going distant in thought. "I suppose I could go through the archives and see if there's any precedent. I just can't work out why a lion would shut down completely on a bonded pilot with such a high synchronisation."

Keith nodded in agreement before noticing that Lance had managed to completely vanish while he was talking to Allura. "Huh. Not even one 'I told you so'."

"That's more Hunk's thing." Allura tutted in annoyance. "Lance tends to flirt until I look away, then flee." She shook her head gracefully, dismissing the thought. "I will be in the archives if you need me before dinner."

Keith nodded in acknowledgement and they parted ways, both of their minds already on the next thing that needed to be done. He headed off in the direction he presumed Lance had gone, using the time spent searching for the blue paladin to gather himself. He wanted to give Lance the opportunity to work out whatever was going on with him right now, but time was a luxury that they might not have. 

As the leader, it was Keith's job to make sure the team worked. If Lance couldn't pilot, then Allura would need to become Blue's pilot full time, leaving a whole slew of issues that would need to be resolved as soon as possible. In other words, he needed to have a _'Conversation'_ with Lance. One with feelings and such.

He found Lance in one of the sunken lounge rooms, staring at the wall in front of him with a small frown. "Lance?" Keith called, announcing his presence.

Lance hummed in response, glancing over at him before looking back at the wall. It wasn't a welcome, but it wasn't outright dismissal either, so Keith would take it. He set his jaw and strode into the room with purpose, which he knew was ridiculous because he was here to have a talk not going into a fight. A fight would be easier. 

He just had to be direct and to the point, and if Lance didn't like what he asked, well, that would be pretty normal. Maybe then there would be a fight. He shouldn't deliberately start one, though. He wasn't here to provoke Lance, just talk. He stepped down into the couch pit and slid stiffly into the chair next to Lance, awkwardly trying to settle himself. He exhaled steadily and forced himself to relax, hunching over to rest his elbows on his thighs. How should he begin? Better to start off with the point instead of annoying them both with small talk. "Lance, what happened when you were captured?" he asked bluntly. 

"I told you," Lance replied, frowning but not meeting his eyes. "Nothing-"

"Bull," Keith snapped before Lance could continue that sentence. He ran a hand through his hair, trying his best not to let his frustration show. He was sick of not being told anything. "Something clearly happened, don't keep saying that it's nothing. Please, don't lie to me."

Lance gaped at him, surprised at being told off. "I'm not lying," he bit out, glaring back at Keith. "I told you exactly what happened."

Keith was glad to see a bit of that fire back. He turned to face Lance, trying to will him to talk. "You've told me nothing," he said. A simple fact.

"There's nothing to tell!" Lance insisted, thought Keith couldn't help but notice that the brunet wouldn't hold his gaze. "There was nothing."

Keith shook his head, not believing that for a moment. "You're obviously not alright, not since we got you back," he said, exasperation creeping into his voice before he could force it down. "This morning just showed that things are worse than we knew and you saying nothing isn't helping. You can't be a paladin of Voltron like this, and we're already a man down as it is." He paused, took a deep breath to focus and gather his next words. "You can... talk to us. The whole team, I mean. You don't have to keep saying nothing happened."

"I don't know what to tell you," Lance said bitterly, slumping forwards and glaring at the floor.

Keith resisted the urge to say anything and took the opportunity to really study brunet, trying to understand his response as the silence stretched on. Lance's expression slowly softened to something more thoughtful, eyes unfocused and eyebrows pinched together in concentration. Perhaps Lance didn't know what to say because he didn't remember exactly what happened? Keith had considered the possibility in passing, but he'd dismissed when Lance didn't give any indication that he was missing time or look like he was struggling to remember any details. Maybe he didn't remember or he didn't realise that there were gaps in his memory. It was worth asking, at least.

"Could the Galra have done something to you that you don't remember?" Keith prompted, drawing Lance's eyes back to him. "I know Shiro forgot a lot of what the they did to-"

"I remember everything." Lance cut over Keith, the sudden intensity making Keith recoil in surprise. "Every. Second. I didn't see anyone, no one questioned me, no one did _anything_. I woke up in that tube the day I was captured, and I didn't leave it until you broke me out. I wasn't hurt, because I couldn't feel anything. I wasn't threatened, because I didn't speak to anyone. I didn't smell, hear, or see _anything_ , let alone anything that I might have forgotten. I wasn't _anything_. The only thing there to forget was- was me." He scanned Keith's eyes, searching for some specific reaction to his words.

Keith had no idea what exactly he might be looking for. Maybe he just wanted Keith to believe him. Maybe Hunk was right, it really was as simple as Lance being alone and scared. Lance was the kind of person who was almost always moving and always talking. Maybe he got lonely quicker than others would? Maybe the torture he imagined was coming scared him more than actual torture would? Was that even possible? Did he think that the team wouldn't find him?

Whatever Lance saw, it didn't seem to be what he was hoping for, judging by the wince and the way he slumped over again. "You'd rather have Shiro here." He said.

Keith blinked, surprised by the sudden turn in the conversation. It took his mind a tick to change gears and another one when he hesitated to give a response. There didn't seem to be a reason to lie; Lance wasn't crying, so Pidge's reasoning didn't apply here. "Of course I'd rather have Shiro here, he's like family to me. Not knowing what happened to him again... But he isn't here, and you are."

Lance closed his eyes and nodded.

Keith wanted to say more, but the words got tangled up in his throat. Something about not wanting to lose anyone else. Something about making the best of things. Words that would somehow make Lance confide in him, or fix the problem, or make him feel better, or just make sure he didn't do anything stupid again.

"Don't do anything stupid," was all Keith managed to say. Of course it was the last part that made it through.

Lance opened suspiciously shiny eyes and gave him a smirk. "I can't promise that. It usually seems smart at the time." The smile fell. "But I promise to do the right thing. Whatever's best for the team, and me."

"I suppose that will have to do," Keith said. Something about Lance's words unsettled him, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Unfortunately, the chimes summoning the team to dinner interrupted any further speculation he might have given it.

* * *

It was late when Lance crept out into the hallways, much later than he had meant to leave his room and make his way down to the heart of the Castle, where the Lions rested. Taking the zip lines would be quicker, but there was no way everyone in the castle wouldn't be immediately alerted if he tried to take the fast launch shuttle down. The main downside of taking the long way was how much extra time it gave Lance to think.

Hunk had walked him to his room earlier that night, hovering around him for most of the evening like a sentient cloud of agitated worry that had taken the form of a man. So much so that Lance was preparing some excuses for not spending the night with Hunk that didn't involve being unsure that he'd sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time if the lights were off. Thankfully Hunk simply wished him a good night at his door.

It wasn't until he was about to head out again after writing a letter to Hunk, just in case things didn't go well tonight, that he realised that the man in question hadn't actually left and was still hovering around on the other side of his door. Even if Lance couldn't hear his nervous pacing he was pretty sure he'd be able to feel the anxiety coming off of him in waves. Guilt threatened to swallow Lance, but he gathered himself together and mentally apologised to Hunk again, leaning against his door with his forehead.

He had to know, no matter how scared or guilty he felt. He could be brave and resolute too.

Those footsteps eventually left, headed for their owner's sleeping quarters, and Lance's hands were hovering over the release button when he felt suddenly tired, irritated and worried. There was no sound, but he knew that Pidge was on the other side of his door right now. He could feel her. Or, more accurately, feel _like_ her.

He'd noticed that happening over the past couple of days. Lance liked to imagine himself a pretty empathetic guy, but this was a level beyond even that. He didn't just know what people were feeling and find himself trying to mirror it - he actually felt what they were feeling. It was only this clear with Pidge and Hunk though; the things he felt from Coran and Allura were muted versions of the originals. Keith was the only one completely immune.

Luckily, Pidge was only there for a couple of minutes. The feeling faded and Lance waited ten minutes or so, just to be sure that no one else was planning to take up residence outside his room.

The air was dark and still when Lance slipped out into the empty corridor. His sneakers muffled the sound of his footsteps to a low, steady beat and his heart thumped out a counter rhythm, the fluttering beat almost exactly twice as fast as the regular 'ba-thump' of his feet.

He hated that sound.

He moved quickly downwards, nervousness making him pick up his pace. His conversation with Keith had bought a few things into focus, even if he couldn't bring himself to admit to being scared of 'nothing'. Not to Keith, of all people. How could he explain to a guy who'd lived alone in the desert for a year that he'd lost track of himself after being isolated and sense-numb for under two weeks? He could barely articulate it to himself. And imagine if he'd tried to explain that he'd seen someone in the stars that were either inside or just beyond the Lions? He couldn't even convince Keith that no one had hurt him.

He'd tried to explain, but Keith didn't show any spark of understanding him, only incomprehension that slowly shifted into pity. Knowing that Keith pitied him right then was enough to make him feel sick with the force of the resentment and shame that bubbled up inside him. He was so pathetic right then that Keith _pitied_ him. Keith would probably have been completely fine in the same situation, might even have seen it as a restful break from the stress of constantly fighting. He certainly wouldn't have forgotten how to focus on the present, what words meant, or how to be himself, in under a damned fortnight.

The empty void still hovered on the edge of his vision, ready to drag him out of his body and into the nothingness at a moment's notice. It was a little further away today than it was yesterday, but he could still sense it, close enough to reach if he tried and still too easy to accidentally slip into if he forgot to move his body with him. It might be further away again tomorrow, and again the next day and so on until finally Lance wouldn't be able to get there anymore. But then he also wouldn't be able to find out for sure who he'd sensed in the void beyond the ocean that was the Blue Lion. He'd lose the chance to know for sure whether it really was Shiro or just another hallucination. If it really was Shiro, maybe Lance could bring him back. 

Shiro was his hero, a Paladin of Voltron, and a friend. He'd even admitted, at least to Hunk and himself, that he felt more than respect and affection for their leader. So of course Lance wanted to find him, but he kept hesitating. If there was even a chance that he might be able to bring Shiro back, why hadn't he taken it already? He needed to at least try, before he couldn't remember how to anymore. He'd been planning to go looking early that morning, but he'd delayed too long, and then there were sirens, action and no time. Voltron was the most important thing, and here he was messing it up. 

He was scared of the dark emptiness, of feeling absolutely nothing again, of not being sure if he was alive or dead, of not being sure there was a difference, and of losing his ability to think at all. He was terrified of not coming back from there.

Knowing that Blue had a pilot besides him should have made things easier. Voltron only needed five paladins, and Allura could pilot Blue. If he got lost and couldn't find Shiro, then the team would be in the exact same place they'd be in if he stayed. If he did find Shiro, even if he couldn't find a way back himself, then the team was back up to five paladins. What did it matter to Voltron if he didn't make it back? There was absolutely no reason not to dive into the void again, except for his own fear, and if he couldn't push through that to save someone he didn't deserve to be a paladin.

Keith wouldn't have hesitated for a second to try to save someone, even if there was a wall of ice in the way. Especially if the person in need of saving might have been Shiro. How could Lance even think that he might have feelings for the black paladin if he wasn't willing to fight through everything for even the slim chance he might be able to help? No wonder Lance could never beat Keith. He could only have things if Keith specifically didn't want them or had moved past them because Keith was better than Lance in pretty much every way, including being more selfless and heroic. Just a better person in general. And Lance had been trying to compete with him?

That realisation gave him the final push he needed to do what he knew he had to. Of course it would be pride and bitterness that finally make him act, instead of love or courage or any kind of innate goodness. Maybe he couldn't really beat Keith, but he could do this one thing right now and that might be enough. 

He finally reached his destination, marked by a set of large, cathedral-like doors that opened to reveal the vast, sectioned hanger where the Lions were kept. Each Lion was seated in its particular corner, and Lance could feel the churning waters of Blue on the other side of the wall, boiling and pacing at the edges of his awareness. If Blue had let him, he was sure he would have been able to connect with her completely and pilot her as though they shared one mind and body. But she'd made it pretty clear that she didn't want that with Lance, having frozen him out twice now. While he didn't completely understand why, he certainly didn't blame Blue for not wanting to have a bond that deep with him when Allura was right there and willing to fly her. Why have a human when you could have a literal space princess for a pilot? That still didn't stop him from being hurt by the rejection, even as he told himself that it was better this way. Voltron was more important than Lance was. 

Unfortunately, Lance wasn't going to be able to respect those wishes. He'd been in Blue when he'd seen the person who might be Shiro, so going through her made the most sense. He'd have to work his way around her, but this time he wasn't trying to connect with her. He wouldn't invite the ocean in. Instead, he'd rise above it, push past it and out into the stars beyond.

It wasn't just Blue that he could feel down here. As he walked past Red's section of the hangers, he could feel the heat and fire that lived inside the Lion. It flickered out towards him as he felt his awareness pulled into the vast flames within Red that threatened to consume him, burn him to ash and scatter him through space. The question of whether he could connect with Red hung in his mind, but the fire withdrew and locked itself down almost as soon as he thought it, bars of liquid-hot plasma forming between them.

Well, that answered that question, he supposed.

He could feel the tangled network of plants that lived inside Green, complex beyond anything that Lance could even hope to understand. Yellow was further away, solid mountains in the distance. Between them all sat the Black Lion, filled with howling winds, cracks of lightning, and endless starry skies.

 _Small sparks of lights in the nothingness, streaks of lightning across his vision. None of it real._ The memory triggered a foreboding prickle down his spine, but he took a breath to steady himself and started walking towards Blue, past the huge, dark shape at the center of the room. It felt like the eyes of all the Lions were on him as he walked, the atmosphere heavy and muted. 

Something made him stop and turn towards the Black Lion. The behemoth gave no sign that they'd done anything, and Lance wasn't even sure what made him stop. Without thinking about it he changed direction, coming to a stop before Black, just far enough back that he wouldn't fall over trying to look up. Being this close made the hairs on his arms stand up in sympathy at the phantom sensation of cold winds and electricity, making him rub at his forearms to soothe down the sensation. 

After a moment he sat down, crossing his legs to protect his thighs from the cold floor and staring up at the dark, impassive robot. "Hi," he said in greeting. 

Black, unsurprisingly, did not respond.

"Do you miss him?" Lance asked, eyes dropping to stare distantly through Black's chest. "I do. We all miss him. It just isn't... It's not right without him, you know?" Lance closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to re-settle himself. "I - I deserved to be trapped in the darkness, but Shiro doesn't deserve that. He deserves the chance to be happy." Lance trailed off. What exactly was he doing, explaining himself to the Black Lion of all things? But he'd started now, and it seemed rude to stop. "I've been happy. Not these past few weeks sure, but I really have been happy. I just can't seem to make other people happy any more. I used to be able to. I think I can do it again."

A smile pulled at his face at the thought, making him realise suddenly that he was crying yet again. He scrubbed at his eyes. "Dammit, not again," he mumbled. "This is just getting ridiculous."

He sighed and looked back up before blinking in surprise, trying to clear his vision. Had Black's head changed position? He would have sworn they was looking forwards before, but now it looked like they had tipped their head down to look directly at him. He hadn't heard them move though. Maybe it was a trick of the lights and his frustratingly watery eyes.

"Did I really see Shiro?" He wondered aloud. If he could be so easily fooled by water and light, how likely was it really that he'd seen anyone, let alone Shiro? "If it really was him, then... " Lance bit at his lip a moment before continuing. "Maybe you can help me find out. Was it you I saw the day I was rescued? Can you show me? Or at least ask Blue not to block me? You're the leader, she'd have to listen to you, right?"

Stars began to wheel at the edges of his vision as a phantom wind coiled closer around him, assertive with the lightest touch of curiosity. Would he would trade with Shiro if he knew for sure that the black paladin was alone in the darkness, unable to feel anything, the way Lance had been? When he thought about it like that, there was no hesitation at all in his mind. He would trade places in a heartbeat.

The Black Lion lowered their head even further, leaning down so close that Lance thought he might be able to jump up and touch them on the nose. The sensation of wind felt as though it changed direction, drawing him gently upwards. 

Lance interpreted this as Black's way of agreeing to help him. "Thank you," he said sincerely, breathing out a sigh before moving to stand up.

He was so lost in his own thoughts of what his next move should be and how he should go about this that he didn't notice immediately that, while Lance had moved, his body had not followed him. It wasn't until the room around him rushed past and blurred away into nothing that he realised what had happened, panic gripping his body briefly before he forced it down. 

Beneath him was still water that perfectly reflected the spinning stars above him, the closest thing to a feature visible in a vast, empty plane of nothingness. He could smell the ocean rushing towards him, tumbling itself into a tsunami of ice and seawater. He felt hot flames flare up and span into fire whirls that skittered around the edges of his awareness. He heard Earthquakes shake sheer walls of rock from the ground. A vast, impenetrable hedge maze grew around him, filling the air with an earthy, herbal taste.

Something intangible grabbed him and pulled him upwards, and everything faded away into numbness.

* * *

Pidge dragged Keith out into the corridor before he managed to get anything resembling a full sentence out. He prided himself on his quick reflexes, but it was late and he'd been woken up suddenly by the green paladin pounding on his door before being dragged out of bed when she became too impatient to wait the few seconds for him to get up. He hadn't even been given time to throw something over his pyjama pants and a t-shirt. Pidge at least had her dressing gown on and sneakers on, the green robe flapping behind her dramatically as she strode up the hall.

"What's happening?" he managed to ask, jogging to catch up to her.

"Blue went nuts," Pidge replied, a scowl fixed on her face."I haven't taken all the sensors off yet, so I got the alert and patched into the video of the Lion's hangers. Blue was legitimately scratching at the wall."

"Okay?" Keith replied, trying to prompt for more inform. He didn't know what to make of that, it didn't sound like anything any of the Lion's had done before. He also wished that Pidge had given him enough time to put shoes on. Walking in his socks was difficult on the smooth castle floors.

"And Lance isn't in his room again."

Keith swore and picked up his pace. "Okay then, where are we-" he was cut off as Pidge turned into the transporter, pulling Keith after her when he nearly skidded into a wall trying to correct for the sudden change. 

Pidge punched a couple of buttons and the transporter door slid closed. "We're going to the hanger. The wall the Blue Lion was scratching is the one between them and the Black Lion." She sent Keith a look, curiosity peaking through the stressed irritation that clouded her face. "Black's lying on the ground with something, but I can't see what it is through the video feed."

Keith made a small exclamation of understanding. Although that explained why Pidge had come to get him, since Keith was the only one here who could convince the Black Lion to move, it also raised more questions. Blue had flat-out gone dark when Lance tried to pilot them earlier, why would they suddenly be reacting like the Red Lion did whenever Keith was in trouble? Why would Black have anything to do with putting Lance in danger? Keith had no idea, and that coupled with the sudden wake-up call had his heart pounding and a blanket of unease settling across his mind.

The transporter door opened, and the pair raced out into the corridor and headed for the Lions. The doors leading into the large central chamber where the Black Lion was kept opened as they approached, the locks already disengaged. Before them, the Black Lion rested flat on the ground with their head between paws that were curled gently inwards, as though gathering something towards the robot's face.

"Lance?" Pidge called into the vast hangar, only to get silence in response. "Lance, you better be here!"

The hangers echoed with Pidge's shouts, but were otherwise silent. Keith couldn't hear any sounds coming from the Blue Lion's corner of the hanger either, so whatever scratching she might have been doing before, she'd stopped it now.

"Maybe he's with-" Keith began, interrupted by a shout from between the Black Lion's front legs.

"Pidge?" Lance called, drawing the pair's attention. Relief rushed over Keith and he jogged across the hanger and around one of Black's huge, metal paws to where the blue paladin's voice had come from, Pidge close behind.

"What the hell, Lance!" Pidge shouted as soon as Lance came into view, throwing her arms up and stomping towards him.

Keith hung back slightly, watching Lance carefully. Lance remained on the ground, eyebrows drawn together in confusion as his eyes flicked between the two of them.

"Lance?" Lance asked. "What happened to Lance?"

Unease prickled up Keith's back. Without his brain telling them to, his feet began to carry him forwards.

Pidge stopped dead, tension through every line of her body. "You can't be serious," she said, strained and small.

"Pidge, Keith, what happened?" Lance asked, struggling to stand. He sounded all wrong, the inflection in his voice alien to the way he usually spoke. "What's going on?"

"Lance, stop!" Pidge snapped, striding forwards to push Lance back. "This isn't funny!"

Lance recoiled several meters, bumping into the Black Lion's nose. "Pidge?" He asked before looking behind her to where Keith was standing. "Keith, what's going on here? Why are you look-" Lance stopped and blinked, as though suddenly realising something. He looked down, bringing trembling hands up in front of him and staring at them with growing realisation and panic. He pushed his hands through his hair as his legs gave out beneath him, sending him crashing to his knees.

"Lance!" Keith broke into a sprint, sliding the last meter to reach Lance just as he crumpled. "What is it?"

"I'm not Lance," Lance mumbled. He let his hands drop, staring at them as they rested on his thighs. "I'm not Lance," He repeated, stronger this time. He looked up, meeting Keith's eyes. 

"Keith, it's me, Shiro," Lance said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't time this to go out before Season 3. Oh well -_-
> 
> That said, posting has almost caught up with my writing. I'ma need to blitz the next few. But hey, if there are things you wanna see, this is the time to hit me with the inspiration stick XD


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> The Blue Lion refused to allow Lance to pilot her, completely shutting down until Allura took the cockpit. After Allura confirmed that there was nothing physically wrong with Lance, Keith finally decided to sit down and have a talk with Lance. Unfortunately, it didn't go as well as he was hoping, with Lance trying to explain his experiences and Keith failing to understand. Disheartened, convinced that he had no place within the team, and determined to find Shiro, Lance heads to the Lions. Pidge and Keith follow him down, only to find Lance confused and claiming to be Shiro.

"What do you remember?" Coran asked, shining a light into Shiro's pupils. Or were they Lance's pupils, given that Shiro was apparently inhabiting Lance's body?

Shiro put that thought aside for now, focusing instead on the question of what he remembered. There was the wormhole, the plan to lure Zarkon's flagship after them, and forming Voltron to fight the emperor and his impressive new armoured suit. But when he thought about it, that was the last thing; he didn't remember the end of the battle or the trip back to the castle.

"The battle with Zarkon," he replied, in Lance's voice. It kept throwing him off whenever he tried to talk, causing him to stumble a bit over his words. "I'd just retrieved the black Bayard, we'd formed Voltron and used it to boost the sword. Zarkon's armour shattered, and then... I woke up on the ground in front of Black."

Coran nodded, putting the light on the table beside him and picking up a device that looked like a glowing model of a silicon atom according to Shiro's memories of his chemistry classes. The light emanating from the device shifted colour along the spectrum as it spun in an almost hypnotising way. Allura hovered over Coran's shoulder, watching the device with an understanding of the technology that Shiro had never come close to. She was dressed in a long, flowing white nightdress with a soft pink dressing down that somehow looked both regal and hilariously domestic on the princess. Everyone except Coran was dressed for sleep, although Shiro hadn't quite gotten a grasp on what the local time was yet. 

Behind the Altean pair, Pidge was bringing up the security footage from the Lion's hangar on one of the consoles. At least she seemed more like herself now. When Shiro had told Pidge and Keith who he really was, the green paladin's reaction had been to shut down until Shiro had tried to offer some comfort. That had been a bad idea in retrospect, especially since he was the cause of her distress. Hunk's arrival had thankfully helped her calm down enough to be able to focus, but she still looked shaken and on edge, the weight of all the questions she wanted to ask hanging over her. 

Hunk had been pacing around the room since he arrived, hands worrying over each other and tugging at his sleeves. He kept sneaking looks at Shiro before looking away and shaking his head, making Shiro wonder what exactly was going through his mind. Keith sat on a counter behind Pidge, staring vacantly at the floor and occasionally lifting his head to stare at Shiro, like he had no idea what to think about the situation. Shiro didn't blame him, he was the one apparently _in_ Lance's body and he had no idea what to think either.

He hadn't thought about his life getting any weirder, but there it was - the universe kept finding ways to one-up itself.

The spinning device beeped, glowing a deep violet. 

"Why did it do that?" Hunk asked anxiously, crossing the room to stand beside Coran in three steps. "What does that mean?"

"It means that the subject's pattern of quintessence matches Shiro's last recorded values far more closely than it matches Lance's last recorded values," Allura replied in disbelief as she looked between the device and Shiro.

"So what, you're saying it really is Shiro in Lance's body?" Keith asked harshly, pushing himself off of the counter and stalking towards them.

Allura gave Shiro a somber look. "I'm saying that it's far more likely that this is really Shiro," she conceded, still not quite willing to confirm anything.

Hunk nodded to himself, as though this was what he expected to hear. Keith didn't seem so convinced, arms crossed defensively over his chest and narrowing his eyes at Shiro with suspicion. Shiro couldn't say he was surprised by Keith's skepticism, even allowing for the insanity that had become their lives, and he knew Keith well enough to see that he was trying not to let himself believe in something and risk the hurt that came from learning that he'd been lied to.

"Okay. If you really are Shiro, tell each of us something only Shiro would know." Keith said, tone still guarded.

Shiro thought about it for a moment as Pidge looked up and over at them, still wary but with some of her natural curiosity coming back to her. He should know plenty of things about Keith that no one else here would know about, but now that he was being put on the spot he was having trouble thinking of anything. Favourite colour was obvious, favourite foods and drink had come up before, even down to the specifics of which flavour of ice cream- Oh. That gave him an idea.

"We stopped for ice cream the first time we met up after you got onto the track for the fighter pilot program," Shiro began. "I got chocolate sorbet and blood orange sorbet, and you acted like it was the most bizarre thing you'd ever seen."

Keith's arms dropped as Shiro spoke, recognition dawning on his face.

Pidge stood and began to drift closer while Shiro was talking, looking between him and Keith to gauge every reaction. "That's not that strange. We'd have orange chocolates all the time at home," she said. Her voice lacked their usual energy, but at least she was speaking.

"I'd never heard of it before!" Keith tried to defend himself, eyes wide with amazement. "It just sounded weird. Chocolate sorbet on it's own sounds weird enough."

"Then you proceeded to get cappuccino and green apple sorbet," Shiro finished.

Hunk looked over at Keith incredulously. "And you called chocolate and orange weird?"

"Yeah, but I admitted my choice was weird," Keith replied with a small pout. "I just like the taste contrast."

Shiro smiled at that, pleased to see Keith's shoulders drop completely, the last of the defensiveness leaving his posture. He had at least accepted that Shiro was who he said he was. Even Pidge looked less sceptical after Keith's reaction, especially when he offered Shiro a small, almost relieved smile and stepped in to clap a hand on his shoulder, gripping a little too tightly. Lance didn't have a lot of meat over his shoulder bones.

"I could probably just try to imitate the way Professor Holt snores for you?" Shiro offered, turning to Pidge. He winced as the memory of the professor asleep in his office chair drifted across his mind. "Maybe not. How about when we went to find the Green Lion together? The locals looked like man-sized green sloths, and the first time we saw one, it startled us pretty bad. You actually managed to jump clean over my shoulder. Used my thigh as a boost up and everything." He shook his head, a fond smile growing on his face. "I figured you'd have no problems climbing the branches and vines that the Green Lion was using to shield themselves with after that."

Pidge didn't respond immediately. "I didn't tell Lance about that part," she admitted, caught somewhere between tears and a thousand other expressions that Shiro couldn't even begin to name. She shook her head and dove forwards, wrapping her arms around Shiro's chest- Lance's chest. Lance was far more narrow than Shiro was, and Pidge's arms could wrap completely around him. "It really is you," she said into his shirt.

Shiro rested his right hand on her head, noting with wonder that he could really feel rather than just sense the warmth of her head and the individual strands of hair. Lance's hands were soft and sensitive, and Shiro could actually feel the texture of Pidge's hair well enough to know that it was fine but thick, and that she hadn't washed it in far too long. Pidge stepped back, wiping at her eyes as she did, and Shiro turned to Hunk-

And stopped as realisation hit him. He knew almost nothing about Hunk, definitely not anything that Lance wouldn't also know. He didn't even have any shared stories that were just him and Hunk. There were only six other people in this castle, and only four of them were fellow humans. How had he managed not to have any story about Hunk?

Hunk jumped in before the silence became obvious, giving him a shaky, understanding smile. "It's okay. You don't have to prove who you are to me. I knew pretty much from the second I saw you that you weren't really Lance," he said with a small shrug. "If Keith and Pidge say that you're Shiro, then you're Shiro."

Shiro nodded, not sure if that was true but grateful for the out anyway.

"But if you truly are Shiro, then where is Lance?" Allura asked, finally giving voice to the question that Shiro was sure had to be on everyone's minds.

"Since I'm in his body, the most likely answer is that Lance is in my body," Shiro answered, pointedly addressing the one thing that everyone seemed to be talking around. Where was Shiro? Or at least, where was Shiro's body? He hadn't seen it and no-one had tried to check on 'him' to see if he was still Shiro or was now Lance. Something had to have happened to him after the fight with Zarkon, and he had no idea what it could be. He could be in a coma, in a healing pod, captured by the enemy, or possibly even- even dead. He just didn't know.

The atmosphere of the room became tense again as the three other paladins looked at each other awkwardly. Even Allura froze in place, eyes darting between himself and Keith. Some kind of silent conversation seemed to be happening in front of Shiro that he was not privy to.

Coran moved to put the still-glowing violet device away, cutting through the apprehension that had built between everyone. "I'm afraid we really don't know where your body is." His tone was light and conversational, but Shiro could see him carefully watching Shiro's reactions from the corner of his eye.

Shiro braced himself to hear that he'd been captured by the Galra again somehow, readying himself to face whatever panic it stirred up in him.

"When the team returned from the battle with Zarkon, the Black Lion's cockpit was," Coran paused and gave Shiro his full attention, sharp eyes studying him. "Well, it was empty. It's the darnedest thing, but you weren't there at all."

Shiro could only stare. He'd _vanished?_ But how? He opened his mouth, but the question wouldn't come out and he was left gawking at Coran silently. He looked over at the other three paladins and Allura for confirmation.

"Shiro, you've been gone for-" Hunk wrinkled his nose in concentration as he tried to mentally do the math. "Over a month, at least."

A month? He'd been missing over a _month_?!

Shiro had not prepared himself for this. The last time he'd been missing he'd at least had some idea of where he was, some sense of time passing even if there were huge chunks of it just missing from his mind. Right now, there was absolutely nothing between finishing off the emperor and waking up on the cold ground of the hanger.

Shiro felt himself stumble forwards, dimly aware of Hunk moving towards him before pulling up short and Keith's arm across his chest to prevent him slumping further down. His hands flew up to clutch at his head, as if that could somehow make the missing time appear back in his memory. It had never worked before, but it was an automatic reaction at this point.

His fingers came into contact with soft, silky hair instead of his usual buzz cut grown slightly out. Because, he reminded himself, it wasn't his hair, or his hand. It was Lance's hair he was currently running Lance's fingers through. The faint scent that drifted through his senses, round and woody with hints of salt and oranges, was the smell of Lance's soap, rising off of Lance's skin.

"Do you know what happened?" Shiro managed to ask, pulling his focus back to the here and now.

"With Lance this morning? Or after the fight with Zarkon?" Coran asked. He waved a hand before Shiro could reply. "Not that the distinction matters too much, the answer's the same for both."

"Either. Or both. Maybe start with happened to me," Shiro said, letting his hands drop. Lance's voice was higher than his own, which apparently made it easier to hear it shaking before he got it under control. Allura's question about Lance still needed answering, but Shiro wanted the chance to understand a little better what had happened to himself before digging into it.

The other three paladins shared another awkward look between them before Hunk spoke up. "We were kind of hoping you could tell us."

Shiro could only shake his head. "There's really nothing between the fight with Zarkon and this morning. I didn't even know I was gone."

"I- We've been looking for you," Pidge said haltingly, her gaze never quite settling on Shiro's face as she stepped back, physically and mentally withdrawing. Shiro forced himself to stay put and let her speak. "I reviewed the logs from the fight, ran diagnostics, I even checked to see if there was any trace of you using that new phasing ability the Black Lion picked up while _in_ Voltron, or someone using it on you." Her words came out faster as she continued, trying to get everything out as quickly as she could. "We kept looking out for any communication that you'd been captured. I ran just about every simulation I could think of, every set of variables I could come up with to see if any of them resulted in you vanishing into thin air. Nothing. We have no idea what happened."

Shiro's hands curled into fists before he forced himself to straighten them out. "And Lance?" He asked, already knowing the answer. He needed to ask anyway.

Pidge looked back up at Shiro, her expression so tired and lost for a moment that he could feel it in his chest before it faded quickly into something harder, more determined but also more distant. "I've pulled up camera footage from the Lion's last night. I haven't gone over it yet, so I don't know if we'll see anything."

Shiro opened his mouth to speak, but Keith beat him to it.

"Let's have a look at it anyway," Keith said, walking over to stand beside the console that Pidge had been working on and looking down at the monitor. "Put it up on the bigger screen."

"Hold on a moment." Pidge said, darting back over to the console. A few keystrokes and the large display flickered to life in the middle of the room, displaying six different views - one for each of the Lion's hangers, and a final view of the main door. 

Shiro pushed himself off of the station he was leaning against, walking around the central console to get a better view. On screen, Lance - the real Lance - unlocked the hangar doors and stood at the opened doorway, staring into the room for a few seconds after the lights came on. Shiro was struck by how tired he looked, especially when Pidge zoomed the picture in and refocused to show Lance more clearly. He closed his eyes and took an obvious deep breath, shoulders dropping slowly on the exhale.

Shiro caught himself unconsciously mirroring the movement and forced himself back to stillness, crossing his arms.

"Wait, did everyone else see that?" Hunk asked, pointing past Shiro to the bottom right corner of the screen.

Shiro followed Hunk's finger to the screen displaying the Blue Lion, eyes lit up brightly in the low light of their area. Slowly they raised their head from its neutral down-tilted position, turning to look in the direction that Shiro presumed Lance was in.

"Blue woke up as soon as he entered," Allura said, confusion heavy in her voice. "I don't understand."

Shiro spared her a quick look, unsure why Allura was so surprised. It was a fair distance for a Lion to activate without a reason, but it wasn't exactly unheard of. What could have changed in the month he'd been away?

His eyes returned to the footage, watching as Lance moved into the hanger proper, steps slow and measured, trepidation written into every line of his body. He watched Lance pause after perhaps a dozen steps and turn to look off to the side at the wall that separated the central hanger from Red's specific section. Shiro's eyes jumped up to the the upper right corner of the screen, where the Red Lion's area was displayed.

In the low light, the Red Lion's eyes lit up and their head snapped around to focus on the wall.

"Okay, everyone definitely saw that too?" Hunk asked, pressing in closer behind Shiro.

Shiro nodded, eyes glued to the display, where the red lion was presumably facing towards Lance. As quickly as it happened, Shiro saw the lights in Red's eyes dim to black and Lance visibly flinch as though he'd been struck. He shook his head sharply and turned back towards the center of the room, resuming his steady pace across the floor.

"What was that?" Keith asked sharply, stepping forwards to join Hunk and Shiro.

Allura shook her head, the silver wave of her hair drawing Shiro's attention for a moment despite his efforts to remain focused on the footage. "I'm not sure. If they'd been in the same room, I'd suggest that the Red Lion just recognised Lance as it's pilot. But that wouldn't explain the sudden shutdown."

Lance left the view of the camera focused on the main door, moving into the focus of the camera trained on the Black Lion a tick later. Unlike this morning, Black was seated upright in their normal position, head raised proudly. Shiro watched as Lance's steps slowed, his hands coming up to grip at their opposite elbow as he crossed his arms over his stomach and hunched over. Saw him shake himself free of whatever was on his mind and force his arms down, shoulders pulled back and head up defiantly as he strode past the Black Lion. Watched him stop and turn back towards Black, then pause, then move instead to sit in front of the Black Lion like an elementary school kid looking up at their teacher during story time.

Perhaps it was just because Shiro was intimately familiar with the Black Lion, but he thought he could see the faintest gleam of light within its eyes. Nothing so obvious as the Blue or Red Lion's had been, but visible if you knew what you were looking for. 

It was difficult to make out most of Lance's actions from the pulled back view of this camera. Large gestures and broad body language could be picked up, but nothing much else. Shiro couldn't even tell if Lance was carrying anything from here. Pidge apparently agreed, as she typed something into her console and the screen that had previously been showing the entrance way changed to show a closer look at Lance himself. "Zoom and enhance," she said, just a hint of mockery making itself known. 

"On that note, can we hear what he's saying?" Hunk asked.

"Sorry. It's picture only," Pidge replied. "So unless you know how to lip read in profile, we're going to have no idea."

Shiro barely registered the words being spoken around him, eyes fixed on the display. His grip on his own arms was getting to be painful, both for his fingers and for the flesh he was digging them into. The Lance on the screen was crying, wiping at his eyes with the end of his sleeve, and Shiro felt his chest twist painfully at the sight. It was hard to watch, especially knowing that whatever happened somehow ended with him here and Lance gone. He had to remind himself that this had already happened, and Lance wasn't here right now for him to even try to comfort.

As Shiro watched, the Black Lion moved, tilting their head to look down without any apparent prompting. 

All conversation in the room fell silent. Lance looked up and said something else that the recording didn't pick up and the Black Lion moved again, eyes lighting up fully as they crouched down to bring their head within meters of Lance.

"What in the actual hell..." Pidge trailed off before she finished whatever question she was going to ask.

In the bottom right corner, the Blue Lion stood up.

"We're definitely all seeing this?" Hunk asked with disbelief.

"Why is the Black Lion responding to him?!" The alarm in Allura's voice was getting to dangerous levels. "And why is the Blue Lion acting like Lance is in..." She trailed off with a small gasp.

Hunk grabbed Shiro's shoulder and exclaimed in surprised, making Shiro jump as the sudden grip on his already too tense arms sent shock rushing through him and set his heart racing. Up on the screen, Lance had stumbled onto to his knees and stayed, wavering back and forth with a vacant, slack expression. Shiro watched mutely as the scene continued, trying to find anything in it that made some sense to him when, in the space of a second, the Green, Red and Yellow Lions lit up. Their heads turned (presumably) towards the central hanger, where Lance and Black sat. Red's jaws even opened as though in a snarl. 

The Blue Lion moved at the same time, their response nowhere near as subdued. They launched themselves at the wall, ramming into it with their front paws and shaking the camera in their section of the hanger so badly that the picture became thoroughly distorted. It cleared enough to show a tilted view of Blue scrabbling at the wall like a cat desperate to be let in.

In the center, Lance slumped over sideways and sprawled into the position that Shiro had woken up. Black stood and stepped back, placing enough room between themselves and Lance's slumped form to rest their chest on the ground with their legs obscuring the blue paladin from the camera's view. The footage in the Blue Lion's area cleared completely and re-focused, just in time to show the Blue Lion with their front paws pressed against the walls on either side of the dents and scratches they'd just made. The top of their head was resting against the surface between their paws, robotic shoulders dropped in such a way that Shiro could only interpret it as utter defeat. They dropped back onto all fours, stepping away from the wall and sitting down on their haunches. Nothing moved; Not in the recorded footage, and certainly not in the room where everyone was watching.

As one, all the Lions went offline, the light in their eyes dimming to nothingness.

Shiro realised that he'd been holding his breath when the aching in his chest finally broke through his awareness and he carefully exhaled. Even before the door opened again and Keith and Pidge walked into the picture, Shiro knew that was all they'd get.

Pidge paused the playback. "Well," she said into the silence that had fallen over the room, "questions?"

Hunk made a strangled, half hysterical sound that was almost, but not quite, like a laugh.

"I've never seen the Blue Lion react so violently without a pilot actively instructing her," Allura said more to herself than the room at large, concern and uncertainty warring for dominance in her expression. "Even last time, she just turned to face where Lance was and waited for us to let her launch before leading us to him. She certainly didn't get that violent."

Shiro turned to ask Allura what she meant by 'last time', but she continued talking before he had a chance.

"This is very alarming." Allura turned to face the team, voice steady despite her face settling into a worried scowl. "The Blue Lion just doesn't react that way, not even when her pilot is critically injured. Whatever happened between Lance and the Black Lion... That looked as though she was actively trying to _attack_."

"So she read the Black Lion's actions as a threat to Lance?" Pidge asked dubiously. "Do you really think that the Blue Lion would attack the Black Lion?"

Allura pressed her lips together and looked away, fingers tapping against her thigh. "Keith, can you find out why the Red Lion reacted that way to Lance's presence?" she asked the red paladin. "I'd like to know what caused them to activate and what exactly triggered them to shut down again. It might give us a clue as to exactly what happened and your bond with Red is still the strongest right now. I expect you will have more luck getting details from the Red Lion than I had getting anything from the Blue Lion."

Keith nodded, although his eyes flickered over to Shiro as he did so. There was reluctance there, although Shiro wasn't sure if it was caused by the idea of leaving Shiro here while he went down to the Lions, having to check in with Red specifically, or something else that Shiro didn't know about. He felt like he was missing some key piece of information. Something big had changed in the time he'd been gone. Exactly how long over a month had he been missing?

Allura raised a hand to her chin, long fingers tapping at her lips as she thought. "I've begun looking into the data we have, trying to find out what might have caused the Blue Lion to shut down earlier today, but there's not a lot of information. Red might be able to provide you with some direction about that as well."

"Wait," Shiro spoke up. He had questions, and if he didn't interrupt now he wasn't sure he'd get them answered. "Has something happened before with the Blue Lion?"

Allura blinked at him owlishly for a moment, clearly thrown. Shiro wondered whether she'd forgotten that he'd been missing the past however many weeks, or that he wasn't actually Lance, and therefore had no recollection of whatever they were talking about.

"Oh! Right, of course." Allura offered Shiro a small, embarrassed smile before turning fully to address him directly. "There was an issue at the start of our last skirmish. The Blue Lion would not start while Lance was in the pilot's seat, although I was later able to take her out into battle with no problems."

"If the bond between Lance and Blue were severed, that might explain her not turning on at all," Coran offered. He was squinting up at the frozen images of the Lions on the screen, as though looking for some hidden detail.

Allura shook her head. "I don't think my bond with Blue is strong enough to have severed Lance's." She paused, brow furrowed in thought as she debated her next words. "It is possible that the Blue Lion may have shut herself down defensively, either to protect Lance or..." She trailed off, hands falling to rest at her sides as she set her shoulders back and stood straight. Even Coran turned to give her his full attention at that, raising an eyebrow curiously. "She may have done it to protect herself from something inside of Lance."

There was a moment of confused silence as Shiro, and presumably the rest of the team, realised exactly what Allura was implying. Looking back, she hadn't suggested that the Black Lion was the one that the Blue Lion registered as a threat, only that Blue was trying to attack something. It was just that the only other option seemed to be Lance himself, and Blue attacking Lance just made no sense to Shiro.

"Wait, you're not suggesting-" Pidge cut herself off, looking Allura up and down with growing alarm. "Do you think that the Galra turned Lance into some kind of Trojan weapon against the Lions themselves? "

Shiro's blood ran cold, draining out of his face and pooling icily in his chest. His thoughts ground to a halt, smacking into the implications of that simple statement. What exactly had had he missed? How many things could have happen?

"I'm afraid I don't know what a Trojan is," Allura responded. "And I don't know anything for certain-"

"When would they have been able to do that?" Shiro asked. His voice already sounded alien to his own ears, but the cold, tightly-controlled note of command threaded through it now sounded like it had to come from someone else. That couldn't be him, Lance's voice or not. "Tell me what happened."

The quiet looks that the remaining three paladins traded between each other, heavy with some meaning that Shiro was starting to guess at, only served to make anxiety rise and coil within his stomach. Allura glanced to the trio of paladins herself, checking to see if any of them would step up to provide a report.

Coran was the one to break the silence, delivering his answer bluntly. "Lance was captured by the Galra just over a kaginent ago. We only managed to retrieve him from a laboratory three quintants ago."

"Fortnight," Pidge clarified, voice small and thready. "And three days ago."

Shiro barely heard the clarification over the sound of static that filled his head and the cold shock that ran through him as soon as he'd heard the word 'laboratory'. While he was missing and god-knows-where, one of his team, his - _Lance_ \- had been captured and taken to a _Galra laboratory_ (God, what if Keith had been captured? Or _Katie_?) where they could have cut him open and re-arranged whatever they found to their liking. Shiro hadn't even been here to try to stop him from being captured or to mount a rescue before the Galra got their claws into him. Hell, Shiro couldn't even check on Lance to make sure he was coping and okay because now he was just _gone_.

Shiro's thoughts spiraled viciously out of his control. Moments flashed across his mind, too fast to focus on and adding up to a swirl of confusion. His arm, crushed beyond all recognition. Hooded figures with dispassionate eyes. Lance's broken body, unconscious and slumped upon the stairs. The smell of burnt blood and electricity. Purple claws against dark skin, then dark metal. The pain of his prosthesis being synced up to his nervous system.

Shiro grabbed at his arm, the memory of that pain flickering through his nerves and sending sympathetic spasms through his nerves. But instead of the now-familiar metal under his fingers there was soft flesh and skin. He could feel the bones of Lance's arm just beneath the surface, twisting organically in his grip.

That wasn't Shiro's arm. Remembering that jarred him out of his head and back into reality. Only seconds had passed, but was breathing far harder than he should be and his heartbeat was racing in his chest (Lance's chest and Lance's heart, Shiro reminded himself), a too-fast _ba-thump_. It made him feel nauseous for some reason he couldn't quite identify.

He forced himself to take a slower, deeper breath and calm his heart. 

"Shiro?" Hunk's voice sparked with alarm, drawing Shiro's attention. Hunk had moved closer to Shiro during the second or two he was lost in his thoughts, but still hovered just out of arm's reach. It seemed that Hunk was not quite willing to touch him yet. "It's okay! Lance wasn't hurt or anything, okay?" Hunk shot another look, loaded with some past conversation, over his shoulder at either Pidge or Coran - Shiro couldn't tell exactly who it was aimed at. 

Immediately behind Hunk, Keith had a hand resting on Hunk's arm, fingers slightly gathered in the shirt. He was frowning at Shiro with confused concern, but Shiro found himself staring at Keith's hand. When had Keith started touching Hunk so casually? Was that new too, or had he missed it before? He felt like his eyes were drawn to every twitch of movement around him, trying to read the silences and body lines, the small tells and communications passing between team members. 

Shiro gathered himself inwards, pushing his shoulders back. The posture made him feel a little more like himself, even if the balance was all wrong. "I think perhaps you'd better tell me everything I missed," he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why yes, I did take 8 chapters to reveal that this was also a bodyswap fic ^^;


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:
> 
> Shiro is returned to the Paladins, but not in the way anyone had really hoped. The rest of the team fill Shiro in, but none of them can tell him why he went missing, or why he's currently in Lance's body. Shiro doesn't have any information to offer either - he doesn't remember anything since the battle with Zarkon.
> 
> With nothing else to go on, the team agree to fill Shiro in on everything he's missed while Keith goes to try and get something out of the Red Lion

The hangar was quiet as everyone waited for Keith to re-emerge from Red. Shiro mulled over the stories that the team had told of what happened while he'd been gone in an effort to stave off the weariness that seemed to be catching up with him, committing the sequence of events to his memory. They'd seemed less like the tales of adventure he'd been expecting and more like reports, all dry facts and a progression of events with no real colour. Allura had started first, giving him a rundown of the political situation within the Galra empire and who the major players were. Particular focus was given to one of Zarkon's sons, Lotor, who had the backing of the Druids and was therefore in the strongest position to become the next emperor. He was also a man seeking revenge against Voltron for his father. There were other players, of course, some with more resources and influence, some with large swathes of the army behind them, and some with enough personal standing not to need either. Very few weren't using a campaign against Voltron as a way to rally support.

Shiro had done his best not to yawn or show signs of inattentiveness during the political talk, but he'd failed more than once.

When Allura had finished, Keith took over, going over the team's missions since Shiro went missing. His report was bare-bones, detailing exactly what happened and who did it, but adding no flourishes and no elaboration on the team's interactions with each other or the locals, beyond a few descriptions. Allura would speak up if something had been missed, but neither Hunk nor Pidge chimed in with any information unless Keith prompted them to remind him of a specific event.

It wasn't until Keith reached the breakdown of the mission where Lance had been captured that Shiro noticed that the blue paladin had barely been mentioned before that point. His name occasionally came up in conjunction with one of them, usually Pidge, being sent to do something while the rest of the team were otherwise occupied, but little else. Thinking about it now, it didn't seem like Keith was deliberately avoiding mentioning him either. What had Lance actually been doing those first few weeks?

Shiro could also admit that he might not have even noticed the lack of Lance in the report if he hadn't been primed to think of the brunet by the whole situation he was currently in.

By the time Keith had finished, Shiro knew exactly what had happened in the time he'd been gone but had no sense of really understanding it. He had the broad picture, but none of the texture that might make it seem real. Maybe tomorrow Shiro could talk to Keith one-on-one, somewhere without the team he'd been forced to lead for several weeks now. Shiro was getting the sense that the transition to leader of the paladins hadn't exactly been smooth for Keith, but at least it appeared that he hadn't been separating himself from the team too much. If anything he seemed more comfortable around Allura and especially Hunk.

Red's head lowered, jaws opening to let Keith slip out. He wobbled slightly as he landed, socked feet threatening to slip out from under him, before he walked over to where everyone else was standing. His eyes were wide and he looked more pale than normal, clearly shaken by whatever he'd been shown.

Alarm and concern were better than caffeine for waking a person up. Shiro was immediately on edge.

"What is it?" Allura asked as soon as Keith was was close enough to hear her without her having to raise her voice.

Keith swallowed before speaking, as though his mouth had gone completely dry. "I saw something," he replied, scanning over everyone quickly. His eyes lingered on Shiro in particular, looking him up and down before he continued. "Lance reaching out towards the Red Lion. It felt like it would be really easy to reach back and connect in some way. Like I could really touch him. But then I saw-" Keith shook his head and took a shaky breath. "I _felt_ Lance crumble into ash and dissipate. Like he'd just dissolved into nothing. Then it felt like someone threw cold water at me. Red refused to give me any more than that."

Keith's eyes skipped over to Shiro again, looking conflicted. "I'm- I'd like to head back to my room, if you don't need me for anything else," he said.

Shiro heard the underlying request for some time alone. However much Keith might want to stay with Shiro right now, he still looked like the person Keith had just seen burn away into nothing. He knew first hand how realistic the things a Lion could show you seemed in the moment. Shiro doubted that Keith actually planned to head to bed immediately. More likely he intended to stop by the training room or gym to think through whatever he'd just seen before attempting to get to sleep.

Hunk stepped forwards, hand outstretched slightly and a question in his eyes. Keith shook his head, the movement small enough that it would be easy to miss if you didn't know him well. Hunk apparently did though, dropping his hand and answering with a small nod. They really were a lot closer now. The thought drew a smile out of Shiro, despite his concern.

"We should probably all head to bed," Allura said. "We can tackle this fresh tomorrow."

Pidge grumbled, not outright saying that she had no intention of heading to bed, but heavily implying it. 

"Well then." Hunk pivoted, facing Shiro. Shiro blinked in confusion. "Come on." Hunk slowly reached forwards and took Shiro by the wrist, gently tugging to indicate that Shiro should follow. "If you're going to be piloting around Lance's body, I'm going to show you how to take care of it."

"Huh?" Shiro asked before being pulled along after the yellow paladin, stumbling as he tried to correct his balance. Hunks hand around his wrist - Lance's wrist - made Shiro hyper aware of exactly how thin and long Lance's bone structure really was. Hunk's hand completely dwarfed Lance's wrist, easily wrapping around it. The yellow paladin let him go once it became clear that he was following, but the feeling of fragility lingered. He couldn't help but wonder how it felt from the point of view of the person holding Lance’s arm. Did he feel breakable to Hunk? Would Lance's wrists feel as delicate in Shiro's real hands?

They eventually came to Lance's room, Hunk pausing long enough to open the door before striding in. Shiro hesitated at the doorway, a subtle sense of wrongness settling into his mind at the thought of entering Lance's room while he wasn't here. Which was absolutely foolish when compared to the fact that Shiro was _in_ Lance's body. When it came to invasion of personal space, being in someone else's body was pretty much the pinnacle.

Okay, he needed to stop wording it like that in his head. Shaking off the thought, Shiro stepped into Lance's room, taking a moment to look around before following Hunk into the attached bathroom. The room was clean and neat aside from the unmade bed and Lance's pyjamas laying out over the covers. There were a few personal touches laying around - a large, spiky shell and some strange rocks on the desk, some small, worn photos of smiling family members and sheets of paper stuck to the wall, slippers beside the bed, a music player left on the desk next to some blue paladin themed stationery. And how did Lance always manage to find those kinds of things? First the slippers, then the socks with Lions on them, the signet rings, the sweatpants- It was like Lance had some kind of superpower for accessorising.

Aside from those touches, it looked almost exactly like his own room. Shiro wasn't sure what he'd really been expecting, but the bathroom fit whatever image he had in his head a little more. There were bottles, jars and pots of various kinds on the shelves and a few other lotions and creams on the few surfaces available. Shiro slipped Lance's hoodie off and hung it on the door before joining Hunk in the room.

Hunk was waiting for him by the sink, squinting at a pair of bottles in his hands. "Lance showed me this a couple of times, so I think I remember everything," he said, placing one of the bottles back down on the sink. "Okay, so. This one with the white label on it is the daily face wash. Lance uses it once a day at night, although I think he uses it after training if he sweats a lot too. If you get really dirty or you're back from a longer mission, the one with the yellow label is a tougher cleanser. Don't use that more than once or twice a week, though, and always follow that up with the _pink_ face mask stuff instead of the green." Hunk placed the bottle on the sink and picked up the next, walking Shiro through each one, how they were used, how often Lance used them, and the order they were used in.

Shiro did his best to pay attention to which of the various products were part of Lance's daily routine and which were occasional things, trying not to get too overwhelmed. He wouldn't have done a lot of this himself, but it seemed important to Hunk that Shiro maintain Lance's routine. Perhaps because it made him feel more like the situation Shiro and Lance were in was just a temporary one.

Shiro certainly hoped it was temporary.

Hunk picked up a jar that Shiro recognised and squinted at it. 

"I know that one!" Shiro spoke up more enthusiastically than he'd meant to, a little too excited to see something familiar.

Hunk stared at him with wide, startled eyes, and Shiro felt himself flush with embarrassment. In part because he'd basically just shouted at Hunk in a way that Shiro realised sounded fundamentally more Lance-like than like himself, and in part because he now felt the need to explain why he knew what it was. He'd found a similar jar left with his laundry, complete with instructions written up by Coran on what exactly it was and how to use it. It was supposed to help scar tissue soften and fade. Shiro had started to use it on some of the scars that pulled or twanged as he moved, once the initial irrational feelings of distress and shame that someone knew about his scarring had passed. 

"I've got some too, I mean," he explained, frowning. How much scarring could Lance actually have?

Hunk continued to stare for a moment before nodding. "Ah. This is supposed to help with skin damage, I think. Scars and stuff. Lance said he has some burn marks on his back from where the under-suit took heat damage in the crystal explosion" He bit his lip, gaze dropping down to the jar in his hand. "They're not really visible though. If he didn't tell me it was there, I probably wouldn't even have noticed. Lance is just kind of particular about how he wants to look."

"I noticed," Shiro commented dryly, eyeing the assortment of bottles lined up across the sink. "I'm not sure he even needs most of this."

"Maybe, but it's his thing." The jar was placed back on the sink, but Hunk didn't move to pick up another one. He leaned against the sink instead, eyes distant."The first time I ever met Lance's family, Lance had said something - I don't actually even remember what he was talking about - but he said something kinda dumb. I remember that Lance's dad just gave him this look and said something like 'You better hope that you grow up good looking. If you have to rely on your brains or personality to get a date, you're going to be alone forever.' I was kind of speechless and really nervous that I was about to get a front-row seat to some family awkwardness. Like, should I be speaking up here? Is this a test?"

Shiro knew he was scowling, but he couldn't help it. 

"But Lance didn't even bat an eyelash. He came back with 'How the heck did you manage to get Mom then? You're ugly _and_ thick,' and his dad laughed, like it was just a thing they did, some friendly back-and-forth. So I figured it was. Lance's dad said something back like 'Because it's better to be lucky than anything else, and I've been lucky.'" Hunk looked back to the sink and its assortment of items, eyes distant as he tried to tease out the memory. "Thing is, I think Lance actually believes that. He can't rely on being lucky or smart or whatever, but he figures he can be pretty. So he takes care of himself, and it's important to him."

Shiro nodded slowly, trying to understand. It felt strange to think of Lance as viewing his looks as the most valuable thing he had to offer. He'd always struck Shiro as someone who was driven to prove his skill in anything he had even a modicum of ability in, but maybe he was just desperately looking for something else he had to offer. That wasn't uncommon, but the thought made Shiro feel uneasy, like he'd missed something small that had taken root and grown larger and darker.

"Where did all of this come from anyway?" Shiro asked, pushing the thought aside.

"Lance made them," Hunk answered, "although I helped with a lot of it. Lance's strongest science is chemistry, and he knew what he wanted and what ingredients should work. We spent some time getting the formulations right and stuff. Especially since he didn't trust any of the existing Altean products, though I can't say I blame him." He pulled a face. 

Shiro had to agree with that. Hunk could be referring to any number of issues they'd had with the differences between what Humans were used to and could work with, and what Alteans used. Still- "You both made _all_ of these?"

"Yep," Hunk nodded, a small note of pride in his voice. "Well, the shower gel base and conditioner were pretty good already, Lance just helped me change the way they smelled. Speaking of which..." Hunk opened up the shower. "Red bottle is Shampoo, pink bottle is conditioner. Don't expect the Shampoo to lather. The green packets are a heat mask that's still in development, so, um... don't use that yet. 

"That's basically everything." Hunk stepped back, hands fluttering nervously in front of him. "Sorry, I know that was kind of a lot. If you want to sleep in your old room, we can go make up the bed and all that now. If you want to be alone for a while, I mean."

Shiro reached out and placed a hand on Hunk's shoulder. Hunk flinched beneath his hand, eyes darting to his arm and up to meet his eyes.

"It's okay, Hunk." Shiro said as gently as he could manage. "We can work everything else out tomorrow. Go and get some rest."

Hunk stared at him for what felt like a long time, expression lost and tired. Finally, he nodded. "Call me if you need anything."

Shiro nodded his assent, and Hunk stepped past him, leaving him standing alone in the middle of Lance's bathroom. 

A single step bought Shiro in front of the mirror. He hadn't really looked at his reflection yet; the hands and clothes had been enough to convince him that he was in Lance's body without feeling the need to find a mirror. But now he wanted to look.

In the mirror Lance's face stared back at him, looking wrong in just about every way he could think of. Shiro raised a hand to his face, watching the not-Lance in the mirror copy his movement. The skin beneath his fingers was soft and smooth, tickling at the light touch as he traced his hand down the side of Lance's face to the bags under his eyes. He looked paler than Shiro remembered too, although Shiro might be projecting, given that he now knew that Lance had only just been rescued from the Galra.

The dark marks under his eyes were no projection. From the looks of it, Lance hadn't been sleeping well.

He let his hand drift further down, thumb running over Lance's lips without any conscious instruction on his part, finding them just as soft and full as he'd expected. However, the way he could feel the slight roughness that Lance's right thumb had developed against the sensitive skin there was something of a surprise, although not at all unpleasant. It was nice to have skin and nerves on both hands. He moved on, tracing out the lines of Lance's cheekbones and jawline next. Lance's jaw was sharper than Shiro's own, more pointed. There was barely any hair under his fingertips either. Shiro had never really been able to grow much facial hair, so it was something of a relief to know that Lance was more or less the same. He really didn't want to have to teach himself to shave someone else's beard.

His hand slipped further down again, sliding onto the long column of Lance's neck before resting at his collar bones, tracing their slope down to the dip at the hollow of Lance's throat. The lines felt more pronounced than he'd expected, sharper. Had Lance always had so little flesh around his shoulders, or was this also new? Without thinking, he tugged Lance's shirt up, running a hand over his ribs. He could feel them, but he couldn't quite remember what they'd looked like before to decide whether Lance had lost weight. He might be projecting again, imagining Lance to be thinner after being captured as well as more pale. There were small bruises littering Lance's stomach, fairly typical of the marks that the training-robot's blasters left if they got a solid hit in. They were no more than two days old so they had to have happened after he'd been rescued.

Shiro's hands were tracing up the center of Lance's stomach, marveling at the light tickling sensation the touch brought and watching the way his abdomen flexed and twitched at even this slight pressure, when his mind finally caught up with what he was doing. He pulled both his hands away as quickly as he could, planting them on the side of the sink. This wasn't his body, and while some degree of contact was unavoidable, he was getting far more intimate than he'd been given permission for. He wasn't using his own hands, he hadn't been touching his own skin or stomach. He'd been touching Lance. That knowledge twisted through him in confusing waves - self-recrimination for letting himself get so lost that he hadn't thought about what he was doing; aching desire to experience any sort of physical intimacy again, even at his own hands; relief that he hadn't found anything damaged beyond the bruising so far; a visceral thrill at the knowledge that he'd been running his - or, more accurately, Lance's - fingers over Lance's skin. Lance, who was not here and hadn't given him permission, which cycled right back around to that self-recrimination.

Shiro screwed his eyes shut and shook his head. He needed to keep it together. This was only temporary.

Unless it wasn't.

Sighing, Shiro pushed himself up off of the sink and walked back into the main room, trying to decide whether he could be bothered going back to his own room or whether it would be okay to just sleep here for tonight.

Hunk was sitting on Lance's bed, staring down at a piece of paper in his hands. Shiro jumped back in alarm, hand flying over his mouth to prevent himself from making any sudden loud noises, not expecting Hunk to still be in the room. The yellow paladin didn't even look up.

"Hunk?" Shiro asked, voice coming out as a loud squeak that had him wincing himself.

Hunk flinched violently, looking up at Shiro with wide eyes, as though he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't have. That expression faded into confusion for a tick before settling on anguish. Without a word, he held out the paper he'd been reading.

Shiro carefully plucked it from his hands and turned it around to a readable orientation. The paper was thin and covered in a pale blue grid. Over the grid, careful but messy words were written in blue pen.

 _'Hey Hunk,'_ the first line began. Shiro stopped, looking back up to Hunk and back down at the paper in his hands. He was holding a letter. Lance had written Hunk a letter. Dread settled into his stomach as his mind filled in the few scenarios where people still wrote letters to each other. Especially those where one party left the letter for someone else to find.

Shiro wasn't sure he should be reading this, it was clearly meant to be between Hunk and Lance. But Hunk had given it to him specifically to read, so he continued.

_'First off, I want to tell you that whatever bad thing happened, I didn't mean for it to happen. This is supposed to be a burn-upon-return kind of thing, so it's something you'll only get if I fuck up again.'_

_'There's something I have to try though. I don't know how to explain it, and everytime I try I just sound crazy. Like, I wouldn't even believe me levels of crazy. Maybe I am actually crazy, and whatever I think I see isn't really there. I will try to explain it though - I feel like I owe you an explanation more than anyone else.'_

_'When I was rescued, I thought I saw Shiro. And I keep seeing things. I can see bright lights at the edges of my vision, even when I'm inside and there are no windows. They might just be hallucinations, but I can also see the ocean inside of Blue, and I think there are stars inside of Black. They seem different to the other things I see. More real, I guess. Shiro was in the stars, either inside the Black Lion or out just beyond them. I think, at least. I want to find out for sure, and I want to bring him home if I can.'_

_'I know I'm not the one everyone really wants around, I'm always second choice at best. Unless we're talking about picking someone to lose or replace, then I'd be first choice. Everyone else here would definitely rather have Shiro than me if it came down to it. Even I'd rather have Shiro here than me. You're the only person I'm not completely sure would rather that.'_

Why would Lance think that? Shiro felt something heavy settle into his chest, meeting the dread and churning into something that he couldn't quite name. It rose up into his throat and lodged there, ignoring his attempts to swallow it back down. 

Everything was wrong.

_'So that's why, even if I'm actually crazy, I'm going to at least try to find Shiro. I want to do this for the team, and especially for Shiro. I'm going to try to deliberately go into the empty place. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to find anything when there's nothing there, but I need to try. I hope that I at least managed to bring him back somehow. Even if I'm lost, as long as I can get Shiro back, it'll be okay. I deserve to be in the emptiness. I deserve to be gone. Shiro doesn't, he should be here with all of you.'_

A litany of _'wrong'_ , _'no'_ , and _'please'_ started running though Shiro's mind. How could Lance think that he somehow _deserved_ to be 'gone'? How long had he thought like that? And now he was missing because of Shiro, because Shiro disappeared and Lance went to find him somehow. He had to have been right too, even if Shiro didn't remember any stars or empty place after the fight with Zarkon. Because Shiro was here now, and Lance was gone. Everything in here had already happened, and Shiro didn't know if there was anything he could even do about it.

His legs were shaking under him and he blindly reached out for anything to sit on before he fell. His hand eventually came into contact with a chair, which he grabbed and pulled over to him, collapsing into it moments later when he read the next line.

_'I'm scared.'_

The writing began to shake, growing both more messy and restrained as the writer tried to pour everything out as quickly as possible while forcing his hand to behave. Shiro felt as though the air was being crushed out of his lungs, straining under the weight of his own helplessness. 

_'I'm scared of being numb again, of not feeling or seeing or anything ever again. I'm scared of being un-alive. Not dead, because I wouldn't die. I'd rather be dead. But Voltron is more important and I'm useless to the team as I am now.'_

_'When the Galra had me, I woke up in that vat of liquid. I couldn't see, touch, taste, or smell anything. It was like every nerve between my body and brain had been cut, and it stayed like that until you rescued me. The only thing I could hear was my own heartbeat, and that was the only thing that I could use to convince myself that I wasn't actually dead. Nothing at all happened to me. No one came, I heard nothing besides myself, and I saw nothing at all. I don't know how to explain it. I might as well have been dead. I kept forgetting that I wasn't and that I was me. Hunk, I was the only thing there and I still kept forgetting me. I'm so forgettable that even I forgot me in under ten days. It might have been funny, but I couldn't even think coherently enough for that. Everything was just numb, and the few things that weren't made me feel wrong.'_

Shiro's whole chest was aching and he couldn't breathe. No one had mentioned this when they told him about Lance's capture or rescue. They told him that Lance was in a vat at the time they found him, but that he was uninjured, if a little confused. No one had mentioned isolation, sensory deprivation or torture. Shiro hadn't thought to ask.

No, it was more accurate to say that he hadn't _wanted_ to ask. He'd wanted to believe that none of his team had been hurt that way. 

The next paragraph had been scribbled out, the pen digging grooves into the paper. Some words were still visible through the mess of ink, each word beating onto Shiro's chest like rain on a drum skin. A fixation on Lance's circulation, imagining that the blood was slicing into the walls of his veins to escape, a hatred for the sounds of his bones grinding against each other, the word 'teeth' occasionally throughout. The rest was unreadable.

_'Sorry, I lost focus, and I don't want to write all this out again. I haven't been able to sleep for longer than an hour at a time. I can't sleep with the light off yet. Whenever it gets dark, I think maybe I was hallucinating my rescue and I'm still in the emptiness. So I'm a little tired at the moment. I know, how stupid is that? Ten days alone and I'm scared of the dark, like I'm some kind of toddler. It's so pathetic it hurts. Please don't tell anyone about that, especially not Keith. I know it's probably too late to worry about it, but don't want him to think that I'm any weaker than he already does.'_

Shiro tried to swallow past that lump again, forcing himself to finish reading before he ran off to do anything irrational. The handwriting still shook, but it was back to being readable. 

_'The point I was trying to get to, if I remember it, was that there was absolutely nothing. If I moved, I wouldn't even know except for all the internal stuff, like the way a muscle feels when it's flexed. But then I managed to move without any muscle or tendon actually moving. I don't know how to explain it, but it was like I was able go somewhere just as dark and numb as the vat and the liquid, but different. There were things in the emptiness that I was sort of aware of and I could kind of get an idea of what they were like. My mind would make pictures of what they could look like, but I couldn't interact with them. I couldn't touch them, they were just mirages.'_

_'Sometimes I don't move when I think I do and I end up in the endless nothing again. That's how I'm going to get inside the Lions.'_

_'See what I mean when I say it sounds crazy? Seriously, even I'm pretty sure I've lost the plot. But I'm also convinced that I'm right, I can just leave my body behind and search through the nothing. If I could just find out if I saw Shiro and reach him, I could find a way to bring him back. Which probably makes me even more crazy. I can never reach anyone. I'm not sure what makes me think I'll even be able to reach Shiro. I just have to try, even if I'm scared of getting stuck in the darkness again.'_

The ink was smudged at the end of the paragraph, circular drops of now-dried water staining the page. Shiro found himself pressing his thumb into the marks, imagining Lance sitting at his desk, so scared that he was crying and his hands were shaking as he wrote out a goodbye letter to his best friend. Shiro didn't know if he could have shown as much courage in the same place.

_'Don't tell anyone else that I was scared, okay? I don't know how you function being scared so often and still managing to go out fighting with us. New respect for you dude.'_

_'So now to ask you to do some things. Everyone should get over me being gone pretty quickly the second time around, so if I didn't actually accomplish anything, don't be too passive-aggressive with the new red paladin.'_

_'Please listen to Coran when he tells you old stories, even the really dumb ones. He deals with being lonely through humour, exuberance, and taking care of Allura, so it's as much for Allura's sake as Coran's. Allura acts like she hates my pick-up lines, but she totally smiles whenever I bring her flowers or compare her to flowers, in case you ever need to butter her up or get her to loosen up on the reins.'_

_'Look out for Pidge for me, and if I did bring Shiro back, please look after him too if you can. You'll probably have better luck than I did. I know it's a lot, and you've got your hands full with Yojim-boy already. But I trust you, and I know you can do it.'_

_'I'm really sorry, Hunk. I know we said we were gonna go home together so that we could back up each other's stories when we had to explain to our families why we bailed out of the Garrison and vanished off the face of the earth. I'm sure it'll be fine, and you'll be awesome anyway. Tell my folks that I did something suitably cool and that I'm definitely dead. Don't tell them I'm only lost. It might seem kind to give them hope, but it's more kind to let them mourn properly. Remember Rebecca's parents? I don't want Mom and Dad ending up like them.'_

_'Lance. (Duh)'_

Shiro sat, staring down at the name for a few long ticks after he'd finished. When he lifted his head, he met Hunk's eyes.

"It was folded up on the table," Hunk explained without prompting. "My name was on it, so I read it. I didn't know- No, I hadn't asked."

"What happened to Lance while he was a prisoner?" Shiro growled, too many thoughts and feelings churning through him to even notice how strange he sounded. "How did you find him? Where was he kept?"

"I don't know!" Hunk snapped back. "Almost everything in that letter is new to me too." He deflated, running a hand through his hair. "I know I should have asked, but I didn't want to corner him into telling me anything. I figured if it was something really terrible, it might still be too fresh to talk about. Besides, any time I asked, he kept saying that nothing happened. How was I to know that 'Nothing' was the actual terrible thing?" he finished in a mutter, a bitter twist to his expression that Shiro had never seen him wear before. 

"Pidge and Keith were the two who rescued him," Hunk reminded him. "I didn't see how he was when they found him or where he was kept. But I don't think they've kept anything a secret-"

Shiro was out the door before Hunk had finished, mind racing to figure out where Pidge might be. If she'd decided to stay up, she might be in her work room, or still in the command room going over footage. She might also have gone to bed. He should probably check that first. Decision made, he turned sharply towards Pidge's room and strode up the hall. Hunk followed along behind him silently, jogging occasionally to keep up with Shiro's strides. Lance's legs were easily as long as Shiro's, maybe slightly longer.

Pidge's room was empty. A quick check of Keith's room revealed that it was, predictably, empty too.

"Would Pidge have gone to her work room or the command room?" Shiro asked, turning back to face Hunk.

Hunk blinked, the tears that had been building up in his eyes finally flowing free. They tracked down brown skin that looked paler than normal, having taken on an ashen cast. "She'd probably have gone back to the command room," he replied, voice unnaturally small and thin. "She'll want to go over the footage at least a couple more times before she heads back to bed."

Shiro instinctively tried to reach out and clasp Hunk on the shoulder, to offer some comfort. He stopped half-way there and let his hand drop, unsure of exactly what he could do to even begin to offer any kind of support. Everything that came to mind felt wrong when he was wearing the body of Hunk's best friend.

He settled for a nod instead and moved towards the nearest transporter, Hunk close behind him. He slowed to a stop in front of one just as the doors opened to reveal Keith, his eyes widening with surprise and a small amount of apprehension upon spotting Shiro in the halls.

"Keith," Shiro greeted him with a small nod, pleased at how steady his voice sounded. He certainly didn't feel steady. He stepped onto the transporter, Hunk getting in a moment later. Keith made no move to get off, despite the sleeping quarters being his apparent destination.

Shiro let the awkward silence sit for half a second before turning to Keith. "I need to ask, where was Lance when you rescued him?"

Annoyance flashed across Keith's expression for a moment before it slipped back into something more neutral. "I told you, we found him in a lab under-"

"Specifically," Shiro interrupted. "I don't mean the facility, I mean specifically where Lance was. You said you found him in a vat?"

Keith nodded and gave Shiro a confused look, eyes darting over his face for some clue about what he was getting at. "Yeah. Lance was in a clear tube full of this weird liquid that he could breathe. He was floating, but the suit he was in kept him from floating to the top." Keith turned to look at the floor, eyebrows drawn together in thought. "The vat was maybe two or two and a half meters in diameter? And it had an outer casing, this black metal or something that was over it when we arrived. The whole thing was flush with the ceiling and the floor, so it looked like a pillar." He looked back up at Shiro, shifting his weight uneasily. "I'm not sure what information you're looking for."

Shiro barely heard. "Complete sensory deprivation," he breathed out, voice hushed. They'd locked Lance in the dark, under water, for ten days. No light, no feeling, no sound, no smell, nothing. What had he thought upon waking up and realising he was in the dark and in liquid? He must have felt like he was drowning. Shiro's own chest began to feel tight in sympathy.

"I don't understand. Those pods that people pay money to go into for an hour of quiet time?" Keith asked, still puzzled.

Shiro squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. It didn't surprise him that Keith hadn't even thought of it as a potential method of abuse that the Galra might use. It was likely that no one here had, they weren't naturally cruel people. They didn't sit around trying to think of ways to break the human spirit. Hell, he only knew about it himself because the officer's training courses included a module on ethics that mentioned it specifically as a violation of human rights that didn't leave obvious wounds.

"An hour is one thing," Shiro said, hands clenching at his sides. "Ten days is something else entirely. We can't even properly study the effects of _white room_ isolation on people beyond three or four days before the hallucinations and psychosis of the subjects make it completely unethical to continue."

The doors in front of them opened, revealing the command room. Pidge was back at her console, laptop plugged in, while Coran paced back and forth beside her with his hands neatly clasped behind his back.

Pidge watched them owlishly as Shiro stepped out into the command room, Keith and Hunk close behind. He didn't really need to ask Pidge anything any more.

"You know what the Galra did to Lance?" Keith asked forcefully, grabbing on to Shiro's arm. 

Shiro's train of thought derailed when he realised just how far around Lance's arms Keith's hand could reach. He dragged his focus up Keith's arm to look him in the eye and nod. He could feel the weight of every gaze in the room on him.

"Nothing," Shiro replied. "Weaponised nothing. Have you ever heard of white torture?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid I won't be posting next week, because 1. I haven't ironed out the last of the kinks in Chapter 11 (Which also ended up way longer than usual), and Chapter 12 is outlined, but not written, and 2. It's my birthday next week, so I've got to do that connecting with people thing.
> 
> But I really wanted to get Chapter 10 up for people, if only for the catharsis of it.
> 
> I have some cut story elements that I might post as bonuses in the meantime.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> Red wasn't as helpful as anyone was hoping, but thankfully Lance's letter was found by Hunk after he attempted to show Shiro Lance's skin care routine. After reading it, a dark suspicion began to form in Shiro's mind, only becoming more likely after running into Keith again and getting a few more details out of him.

"White torture?" Keith shook his head. "I don't think I've heard of it."

All eyes in the room were focused on Shiro, but there was no recognition in any of them. 

"It's an ’interrogation’ technique," he began, lips twisting in distaste as he dug into his memory, "an extreme form of solitary confinement with added perceptual isolation. The victim is kept in a white room with no clocks or windows. The light is always the same brightness, the food is always white and doesn't have a scheduled arrival time, the sheets, your clothes - everything is white. There's no sound either. There's just nothing. Most people lose the ability to think coherently after three days." His eyes darted around the room, taking in the mix of confusion and dawning horror on the faces around him.

"What kinds of effects would it have?" Coran asked, no trace of humour in his voice.

Shiro took a breath to steady himself before plunging on. "If I'm remembering it correctly - anxiety, depression, hallucinations, delusions, incoherent thoughts, and... in some people it's shown to increase their suggestibility. They believe whatever they're told, especially if it comes from someone who seems like they have some authority." The room remained silent, and Shiro continued despite the churning in his gut. "A white room is the closest we can come to total sensory deprivation on earth, but whatever was done to Lance was more extreme than anything that humans have done yet, as far as I know. Lance was trapped in almost _complete_ sensory deprivation. Absolutely no interactions with another living thing, no sight, smells or tastes, minimal feeling, and no sounds from outside his own body for a full ten days. Not even the ability to walk around, sit against a wall or lie down on the floor. All the effects I mentioned are for _only_ not-quite-total sensory deprivation."

Coran slumped back against the console, shaking his head in disbelief. "I had no idea humans reacted so extremely to low-stimulation situations." He ran a hand over his face, fingers shaking slightly. "I should have guessed. You're all so social and easily bored, you're not built for stress the way Alteans are. I should have thought-" He cut himself off, eyes going wide as he went dead still.

"Coran?" Hunk asked when the sudden quiet dragged on.

That seemed to snap Coran out of whatever had struck him. He pushed himself off of the console and strode past the paladins, fleeing the room. Shiro watched him go before turning back to the rest of the team. Pidge had a hand over her mouth, eyes unfocused and staring through him, lost in thought. Keith was completely livid - the blood that had drained from his face when Shiro had begun explaining had returned with a vengeance, his body vibrating with anger.

"That doesn't tell us anything about where he is now," Keith ground out between his teeth, hands clenching and unclenching by his sides. "Or why Shiro's currently in Lance's body."

"Lance said that he deliberately went to the Lions to find Shiro." Hunk said, hands dancing about him nervously, as though wanting to make contact with someone but too scared to try. "He didn't tell us because he thought it made him sound crazy, but he wanted to bring Shiro back. Which... I guess he did." Hunk looked over to Shiro, who looked down at his hands rather than meeting Hunk's eyes. "He thought that Shiro deserved to be here and he deserved to- to be gone." All his nervous energy fled in a rush, leaving Hunk deflated, limp and lifeless. "Why would he think that? How could anyone think that they deserved to be locked away in the dark?"

Shiro found himself unwilling to give an answer. The question was rhetorical anyway, and his mind was already filled with a-thousand-and-one things that the Galra could do with a pliant, delusional Lance.

"Could one of us have said something that made him think- Wait, did _I_ say something while he was all suggestible that made him think that? How long is that supposed to last?!" Hunk's voice rose in pitch and speed as he spoke, becoming increasingly alarmed as he tried to go over his memory of the past few days. 

Shiro, worried that he'd work himself into a full panic at this rate, gripped Hunk’s shoulders in his hands and tried to reassure him. "Hunk, relax. Even if Lance was in an easily-influenced state of mind, I really doubt you said anything that could have made him decide that he deserved to be gone, okay?"

Hunk didn't look completely convinced, but he nodded. Shiro took it as a win.

"But how long _is_ that suggestibility supposed to last?" Keith asked. He looked down at the ground guiltily for a moment before focusing back on Shiro, apprehension written through his whole body.

"I don't remember," Shiro admitted after a tick. "It could have been minutes, or maybe a day or so."

Keith closed his eyes and nodded. "Okay. That's good," he mumbled, more to himself than the group.

"Keith?" Hunk asked, drawing the name out and taking a step towards Keith, nonthreatening but insistent. "What did you say to Lance?"

Keith hesitated only a moment before replying. "Earlier today, or yesterday I guess, Lance asked me if I'd rather have Shiro here than him," he said. He studied Hunk's face a moment longer before deciding there was no use in denying what had happened. "I told him that I would."

"What?!" Pidge shouted in outrage, overlapping Hunk's own shocked and dismayed cry of "Why would you say that?!"

Shiro could only watch mutely, the tension in the room weighing down upon his chest and stealing words from him.

"Because it's true!" Keith replied with heat, looking between Shiro and Hunk. "Lance knew the answer before he brought it up. He's a member of this team and a- a friend. I'm not going to lie to him if I don't have to."

"You didn't have to lie," Hunk said, distress making his voice hoarse. "All you had to do was _not_ say that you'd rather Shiro was here instead of him! You could have said nothing, or changed the subject, or even just pretended that you want him around at all and- and wouldn't trade him for Shiro if you had the chance!"

"I didn't say that!" Keith insisted, glaring. "I _never_ said that I'd trade anyone and I definitely didn't say I wanted Lance and Shiro to swap places!"

"Didn't you?" Pidge interjected quietly, an undercurrent of anger humming through the rigid lines of her shoulders. Everyone's eyes snapped to focus on her and she paused to take a breath and steady herself. "I know I did. Keith, I _told_ you what I said to Lance before he was captured. You _knew_. What would you think if I went missing and Shiro told you that he'd rather have me here than you? Especially if Hunk said that he wished that you were gone instead of me not long before that? Even if you were told we didn't mean it, it'd still hurt a lot. Wouldn't you think that everyone just wished they could trade you in and get me instead?"

"You too, Pidge?" Hunk asked. He sounded far less surprised and more resigned than he had with Keith. "Tell me you didn't tell Lance you'd rather Shiro was here than him."

She looked pained. "I can't.” 

Some of the gaps in Keith’s earlier reports started to take on a new life in Shiro’s mind, the singular focus on action and outcome rather than team-building and interaction now seen in a darker light. He hadn't thought about how much his loss could impact his small team, but out here in space their whole world consisted of seven people - two alteans and five humans. If you ignored the four mice and a cow that had joined their ranks, they'd been robbed of a seventh of their world when he'd disappeared. New people visited and passed through quickly, but no one stayed.

"I'm too tired for this." Hunk ran a hand over his face, voice tight with barely-checked fury. "If I don't leave now, I'm going to say something I regret."

"Hunk-" Keith placed a hand on Hunk's arm, only to have it shrugged off. A look of hurt rippled across his face.

"Don't," Hunk said quietly, taking a step backwards. "Not now." 

The yellow paladin turned and headed back to the transporter. An uncomfortable silence fell as Keith stared after Hunk and Pidge turned back to her computer, radiating a brittle tension.

"You should try to get some sleep," she said, her words punctuating the quiet and contradicting the sentiment they carried. "If you _can_ sleep." 

Shiro wasn't sure if the words were for himself or Keith, but he decided it was in everyone's best interests if he acted as though she were talking to him. Braving the sphere of stress that surrounded Pidge like a force field, he placed a hand on her shoulder. "You too. Allura was right, we can start working everything out in the morning when our heads are clearer."

Pidge tensed under his hand, surprisingly-strong muscles flexing in her shoulder as she flinched at his touch. She didn't pull away, though, instead closing the laptop in front of her with a snap as she stood. After a tick of hesitation she wrapped her arms around Shiro and hugged him, grip too tight and almost bruisingly hard around his chest.

"Sleep well," Pidge mumbled before stepping around him, sparing a glare for Keith as she passed. 

Keith appeared to be completely oblivious to it and stayed staring at the transporter for a few ticks longer, face unreadable even to Shiro. Finally he tilted his head back to address Shiro directly. "Do you want help setting up your room again?" he asked.

"Thank you. I'd like that." Shiro nodded and offered a small smile, grateful to have company just a few minutes longer after watching his little team storm off to their separate corners to lick their wounds alone. It seemed like Keith might need it too, judging from the relieved smile he got in return.

* * *

The fact that Shiro ended up wrapped in a nightmare shortly after falling asleep in his old room wasn't surprising, given exactly what had happened and what he'd learned in the last few hours. It would have been far more surprising if he'd fallen asleep and everything had been... Well, not normal, because nightmares of some kind had teamed up with dreamless unconsciousness to form the new normal. But he would have been surprised if he'd slept peacefully.

He found himself in a room, dressed in a black body-suit that wasn't quite thick enough to keep the cold out. The tattered shirt he'd been given didn't help much either, but it at least added a little bit more warmth. He tried to wrap his arms around his chest in an effort to keep some of his body-heat from escaping, only to find that his right arm was completely missing. In its place was a badly bandaged stump and nothing more.

Phantom pain danced through the missing limb, the ache of the absence of what he knew should be there lancing though non-existent nerves and veins. Shiro gripped the severed end of his arm, as though the warmth of his hand might somehow convince his mind that there was nothing there, nothing left to feel pain beyond the shattered bone and ragged nerves that marked the end of his arm. He felt the loss of his dominant hand far more in his nightmares than he ever let himself in his waking hours.

Gradually, he became aware of the room around him, though initially it only existed when he focused on it. First the floor, dark and cold as iron or concrete, followed by the blue-grey metal of the walls and bars. The next thing to invade his senses was the sounds. Not the clank of armoured boots or robotic feet, nor the screams or moans or soft sobbing that he half-remembered hearing in the cells. No, this was something else, something foreign to his hazy memories of the Galran prison, but increasingly familiar to his life since his escape and the nightmares themselves. He could hear Lance's muffled, pained cries as someone did something to him that Shiro couldn't yet name.

This was far from the first time that Lance had been featured in Shiro's nightmares. His dreams were often just confused flashes of things that he'd forgotten or replays of his escape where he never made it out and was re-captured somewhere along the path. But ever since the crystal explosion, Lance's injured body had invaded his thoughts more and more, placing the blue paladin into the role of the tortured-other in Shiro's nightmares. He'd even supplanted Matt with the frequency that he appeared. When his dreams called him a monster, they used hatred in Allura's eyes, or disgust twisting Matt's lips at what he'd become. They spoke in Keith's voice, telling him he'd changed into something unrecognisable. But whenever Shiro was forced to watch as his friends- his team- were torn apart, tortured by the enemy, used to punish Shiro or dismembered at his own hands, Lance always stood front and centre. 

Perhaps before it was simply because Shiro knew the way Lance's limp and battered body felt in his arms, remembered the smell of Lance's blood and electricity mixing together. Now he knew that Lance had been a prisoner of the Galra, kept in a laboratory and left completely isolated for some unknown end. His brain used that knowledge to ratchet up the dread in his dream, forcing him to relive the feeling of helplessness that coloured every memory of his time in captivity.

Shiro moved towards the sound of Lance's voice, pressing himself against the wall and using it as a support so he could shuffle along without needing to stand or remove his hand from it's position over the end of his right arm. He leaned against the bars that made up the front of his cell, shoulder resting in a gap as he peered through them. Lance hung by his wrists in a small spotlight of existence within the indigo emptiness beyond the cell. His eyes were screwed shut against the light and he was surrounded by cloaked druid-like Galra figures with claws and surgical tools. They drifted around Lance, sometimes stepping in to touch and tilt him with too much familiarity, like a specimen they were preparing to dissect. Lance’s injuries changed each time a figure passed in front of Shiro and briefly obscured Lance from his view; now burns in intricate plant-like patterns; now neat and regular slashes; now blisters and acid wounds; now huge, dark and angry bruises. 

With a choked cry of distress, Shiro threw himself against the metal bars. "Stop!" He shouted, voice echoing unnaturally. "Let him go! Don't touch him, please!" He rattled at the bars again. "Don't hurt him any more!"

As one, the robed figures turned towards him, revealing that their hoods were filled only with shadows and a pair of glowing yellow eyes. In the strange way that dreams work, Shiro knew at that moment that Lance had traded places with Shiro, so that Shiro would not be hurt. Shiro would be released, but Lance would be kept here.

"You can take me instead, just-" Shiro began, only to be cut off.

"N-no!" The Lance in his dream shouted, voice rasping and dropping away in the middle. The figures turned back to him in unison and Lance addressed them directly. "We made a deal. I deserve this, he doesn't."

The largest of the shadowed figures stepped towards Lance, its motions sharp as they grabbed at his head and leaned in close. Although their forms hid Lance from Shiro's view, each sharp, jerking movement of the robed figure's arms was accompanied by a pained whimper or obstructed sob as Lance struggled against their hold. Shiro could see just enough to know that the figure had jammed something into Lance's mouth.

Shiro screamed, throwing himself against the bars again. A memory flashed across the surface of his mind; one of the other prisoners from the gladiatorial arena whose teeth had been damaged in a fight and started to go rotten. She'd been seized by the guards and hauled to a nearby room with no door, where minor injuries were washed and bandaged. Sentries held her down and a Galran guard yanked out all of her teeth one by one as she'd struggled and snarled, until by the end she sounded the way that Lance did now. Two weeks later her teeth had been replaced with razor-sharp metal that cut her own mouth for weeks.

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind when the largest Galra stepped back from Lance, a long claw tracing over his jawline. Blood and spit poured over the blue paladin's bottom lip, the cause soon obvious when the cloaked figure turned and carelessly dropped the thing he'd removed to the floor.

A tongue. The robed Galra had removed Lance's tongue.

The bars before him vanished. Shiro stumbled forwards, taking a second to push himself upright and race towards Lance. The blue paladin's hair drifted around his face as though he were underwater and Shiro realised now that Lance wasn't just suspended by his wrists, he was also tethered to the ground by ropes wrapped tightly around his legs, crossing the bare skin from hip to ankle. The robed figures blinked out of existence as Shiro passed them, the largest dissolving as he ran through them to reach Lance. He grasped at the ropes that held Lance up, his prosthetic hand reappeared at some point, and snapped the bindings around Lance's wrists before gently helping him down. Lance's body felt light, as though it might float away at any second, so Shiro dropped to the ground with him and pulled Lance into his lap. He settled the blue paladin against his chest, metal arm curled protectively around Lance's head and neck. 

"Lance, buddy, I'm here. It's okay, I've got you," he babbled, brushing a curl of brown hair back from Lance's forehead and ignoring the trails of blood that ran from Lance's mouth. The words weren't as important to him as getting some reaction from Lance.

"'Iro?" Lance asked, turning his face further into Shiro's hand, tears tracing across his skin. His eyelids fluttered, but he didn't open his eyes. "'careg'," he muttered, the word jumbled by his missing tongue. Shiro knew he was trying to say _"I'm scared,"_ though, he could feel it in his chest.

"Yeah, it's me," Shiro said, thumb stroking at Lance's cheek. Dread curled up his spine at the way his thumb left a dark bruise and a bloody smear across Lance's skin. "I'm here. We're both here."

 _"It's dark."_ Lance opened eyes, but instead of blue, there was empty darkness dotted with distant stars. Lance raised his hands, damp with water or blood, and placed them on either side of Shiro's face and tracing along his jaw.

_"You weren't here."_

Shiro sucked in a sharp breath, surfacing just far enough from the dream to push himself away from the aching emptiness inside Lance's eyes and back towards wakefulness. Lance's face stayed in his vision, hollow eyes and empty mouth still cradled in his hands.

The room in his dream faded away slowly, starting with the realisation that the damp feeling on either side of his head was his sheets, drenched through with sweat and bunched up around his head and arms. He'd gathered all his bedding up in front of him in his sleep and managed to get his right arm thoroughly tangled in it, sparking a few seconds of panic as he tried to untangle himself. In his distress, he’d tried to activate his arm to break through his bindings only to realise that nothing was happening, panicked again, then remembered a moment later that he no longer had a prosthetic arm.

Right. Lance's body.

With some effort he calmed himself down and carefully began to work the mess of sheets up and over his head. His bed was in complete disarray and it felt like he'd untucked the bedding by thrashing wildly and proceeded to kick the blankets off and spin himself into a tangle in the sheets. Shiro was known to toss and turn if he had a nightmare, sure, but he had never really moved around that much. He wasn't one to flail wildly, usually only twitching or trying to make himself smaller. It seemed like Lance's body had more of a fight reaction to a nightmare, thrashing with enough force that Shiro lost track of exactly where he was in relation to the edge of his bed and managed to roll onto the floor in an ungainly heap while he was trying to untangle himself.

Finally clear of the sheets Shiro sat and gasped for air, hands clutching at his chest. He looked around the room as he finally began to see clearly, the low lighting that he always slept with having brightened up into a gentle yellow now that he was awake. It looked the same as it always had, give or take a few empty packets of juice and snacks. Despite that, he scanned every corner, as though it might contain some unknown horror, until his breathing finally slowed to a more measurable pace.

Shiro got his legs under him and stood up, an unexpected moment of dizziness hitting him before he managed to resettle himself and take stock. His heart still beat a too-fast staccato behind his ribs and his muscles felt tense and over-extended. His eyes were dry and burning and he was covered in sweat, leaving him feeling grimy and tired. He needed a shower- he needed to take _Lance's body_ for a shower. He knew he'd have to do it sooner or later, but he'd been avoiding getting too handsy with Lance's body while he was in it. He'd managed to change into his black pyjama pants and a shirt without looking at himself too much, but he was going to have to get fairly intimate to get clean.

It probably wouldn't be a problem if he could just see it as his own body, or at least view it impartially, instead of being so aware that it was Lance's and not his own. He didn't think Hunk or Keith or even Coran would have hesitated to treat Lance's body more or less as their own. Even Allura probably wouldn't have batted an eyelid if she'd been the one who ended up in Lance's body, although Shiro found himself uncomfortable with that thought too. But he felt like he specifically shouldn't be touching Lance without his permission, and the main reason was that he kind of _did_ want to touch. There was a temptation to run his hands over every dip and changing texture, take note of every difference between himself and the brunet. Things felt subtly different through Lance's senses beyond simply the fact that both his hands had the much finer sensitivity that came with real flesh and nerves. In fact, Lance's whole body seemed more sensitive to Shiro. Plus, his skin had felt plush under his fingers when he'd touched it earlier, and while Shiro hadn't thought about it too much, he'd still noticed more than once that Lance looked soft despite being all angles and limbs. It was all different and something he was positive he shouldn't even be thinking about. 

He ran his hands through Lance's hair, the salt and sweat making it feel gritty and gross. That impulse had been the reason that Shiro wasn't sure he was quite ready to shower yet, but he couldn't put it off any more. He really needed one, and maybe afterwards he could sleep again. 

Decision made, he turned towards his attached bathroom, but paused with his hand on the doorknob. He'd promised Hunk that he'd follow Lance's routine, which he hadn't actually done before heading to bed since he'd figured that Lance would have done that himself before his visit to the lions. If he was going to shower, he should really follow the routine that Hunk had laid out for him and that meant showering in Lance's room. Remembering not to use the green packages and taking the time to use a toner and moisturiser would probably help to cover any strangeness and discomfort that rubbing his hands (Lance's hands) over Lance's body in the shower would spark.

With a plan in mind and his nightmare firmly forced to the back of his thoughts, Shiro exited his room and headed for Lance's.

Entering Lance's quarters at night and alone felt different from following Hunk into it earlier. The room was silent and set to the ship's ambient temperature rather than the warmer levels that Lance normally kept his room at. It made it feel like Lance was really gone. Shiro shook off the feeling and headed to the bathroom, letting the room warm up while he scrubbed at his nightmare, trying to rinse away the image of Lance bloodied, bruised, and rendered blind and mute.

If he maybe ran his hands over Lance's wrists and legs, assuring himself that the skin was at least unbroken, then who was to know?

Shiro had made it through the shower and fumbled his way through Lance's skincare routine (without using the face mask, he didn't think he could handle having something that thick on his face right now) before he realised that he'd forgotten to bring a change of clothes with him. Not that Shiro's own clothes would actually fit Lance. Shiro might not be much taller, but he was whole lot wider. 

Securing his towel around his waist, he moved back into Lance's room, now warm and brightly lit. He opened the wardrobe, checking the top drawer for a pair of underwear and putting them on as quickly as possible. That bit of modesty taken care of, he started looking around for Lance's pyjamas to change into, finding and pulling on Lance's pyjama pants before the sight of a familiar vest caught his eye. He reached out and carefully picked the item up, unfolding it in front of him and blinking at it in confusion.

Why was his vest in Lance's wardrobe?

Shiro pulled it closer, running his thumb across the fabric, confirming that yes it did indeed look and feel like his vest. He slipped it on over his shoulders, noting the way the vest hung off of Lance's smaller frame, the chest far too large and the shoulders too broad. That's when a faint scent caught his attention, something hard to describe except to say that it was good. Really good. Shiro picked up the high collar of the shirt, delicately sniffing at the fabric to find the scent slightly stronger there. No doubt about it, his vest was the source of the really nice smell. Bur Shiro didn't wear cologne, and the aftershave he used was unscented.

Wait... was this how Shiro specifically smelt to Lance?

He inhaled the scent again, feet carrying him to sit at the edge of Lance's bed without any conscious instructions on his part. It had never occurred to him that having a different body didn't just mean that his senses would have different strengths. The way he perceived things would also be different too, so things may not taste or smell different from what Shiro expected them to, but how _Lance_ reacted to them could be.

Looking around the room again, Shiro started to wonder how much of what he was experiencing was how Shiro perceived things and how much was the way Lance perceived things. The warmth of the room felt just right for Lance, but would it be too hot for Shiro? Too cold? Were the colours really the way Shiro remembered them, or were there differences he hadn't noticed? If he tried to write, would his handwriting be Lance's or Shiro's? Curiosity piqued, Shiro stood and walked over to the desk to pick up the Voltron note book and begin looking for a pen.

Underneath the notebook was another, slightly smaller notebook. Shiro recognised the style immediately, the brand the kind sold in the Galaxy Garrison's stationery shop. Placing the other book aside, he picked up the older notebook, fingers running against its scratched and battered cover. There was no subject written on the front, so Shiro opened it to the first page to see if there were any details inside. Notes filled the first page in Lance's loose and messy scrawl, complete with lists of textbooks and chapters to read in them. Around the edges of the page were random doodles of rocket ships and space men.

A wave of nostalgia for his early days in the Garrison hit Shiro. He was a bit younger than everyone else in his class, but he'd felt so mature and independent, even with the curfews and regimented schedules of the dormitories. He'd never been that far away from home before.

Without thinking about it, he flipped through the next few pages, ignoring the notes in favour of the short commentaries Lance had written about his teachers and the drawings that filled his pages.

On the second page were pictures of stick figures trying to climb over stars and a conversation that had been passed between Lance and some unknown person in his class.

 _If I fail the assignment, do you think Lieutenant Vogel will spank me?_ Definitely Lance's handwriting.

_Lance, she's like... thirty-something!_

_Dude, hot is hot._

_I'm not sure I want to be your assignment partner any more._

The next page held pictures of an ever expanding series of circles that were at war with song lyrics and some random notes for a "History of Space Exploration" class.

_The selection criteria for the first manned mission to Mars included a question about how the candidates would feel if they never saw Earth again. They had to expect that they would never be able to return._

_You can never go home again_ was written below in a different pen colour.

Shiro turned the page again, and stopped.

Stuck to the page, surrounded by Lance's notes, was a picture of himself. Or at least, the way Shiro had been before... everything. He recognised it from one of the promotional photos that the Garrison had taken. He was young, but he'd had the kind of square-jawed multicultural look that the Garrison wanted to project, plus he'd already passed the officer's training courses, and Shiro had to admit that he was a skilled and talented pilot, at least. The Garrison had thought he was a perfect face for their recruitment program, particularly after making it through the selection process to begin training for the Kerberos mission. That was the kind of thing that got reported on in certain circles.

The notes around his own photo all looked like self encouragement, promises Lance had made to himself to meet him some day, fly with him, or look that good in his uniform. Shiro felt himself blush a bit at that comment, even as it made something in his chest ache. Lance didn't get to meet or fly with that person, that young man was long gone by the time Lance had met Shiro. He tried to push that thought from his mind and went to turn the page when he noticed one part that was written heavier than the rest.

_Show him he made a mistake. Prove that he was wrong. Show everyone._

Shiro frowned at the words, trying to figure out what they could be talking about. When nothing came to mind, he continued to flip through the notebook, promising himself that he'd ask Lance about it in person if- _when_ they got him back.

Shiro drifted back to the bed as he flicked through the pages, sliding across the covers to sit with his back against the headboard and his knees tucked up in front of him. Putting the notebook down would be the right thing to do, but the desire to know more and maybe even gain some more understanding of Lance's mind before all this happened kept him flicking through the pages, scanning for anything that might reveal... something. Shiro wasn't entirely sure what he was looking for, but reading the book made him feel a little more like Lance was still here.

There wasn't much else that resembled lecture notes in the following pages, either because they had been moved to their own books or because Lance had stopped writing them down at all. In their place were to-do lists, more song lyrics and quotes from books, phone numbers, addresses, and some commentary on the people around him. The comments were usually funny or about how hot various classmates and teachers were (male and female, Shiro noticed with some curiosity), but sometimes they held a surprising amount of vitriol, particularly when contrasted with pictures of mermen shouting "I'm naked!" swimming around the borders or stick figures flailing wildly in various dance moves across the top of the page.

Keith's name began to appear on a few pages, with at least one page being entirely taken up by a list of good things instructors had said about Keith that eventually devolved into a list of comparisons between himself and Keith. The pen colours changed frequently on that page, as though they'd all been written on different days. The string of unfavourable comparisons eventually ran off the end of the page and wasn't picked up again. Shiro felt himself scowling at the list as he read; he knew that Lance had held a one-sided rivalry towards Keith, but it was disheartening to find out how much energy and anger Lance had invested into it. Particularly as some of these comparisons read less like things that Lance would say himself and more like he was quoting his instructors, leaving Shiro wondering if the teachers were encouraging that rivalry to try to goad Lance into working harder, or just trying to punish Lance personally and get him to drop out of their classes. There were always some instructors that tried to drive away cadets they didn’t want to deal with.

Then suddenly Keith wasn't mentioned any more.

Shiro skimmed over the next pages, finding notes on who was on curfew monitoring duty and where they patrolled, ideas for a birthday present for Hunk, and a schedule for accessing the simulator with details on how to set it for various fighter pilot scenarios. Including Kerberos, Shiro noted uncomfortably.

A few more pages of mundane notes and something that looked a lot like poetry but might just be lyrics to a song Shiro didn't know, and he turned to a page that contained an itemised list of the ingredients Lance wanted in a moisturiser. And just like that, Lance was now in the Castle of Lions and the pages started filling with Altean words to look up, recipes, song lyrics that were pieced out and re-written with arrows pointing to different places in the text, schedules, to-do lists, compliments to use later, and plans. All of them were surrounded by random drawings, frequently badly-drawn depictions of aliens they’d met but occasionally caricatures of the paladins themselves. One page had Allura with her hair sparkling, Hunk in a singlet with sparkling biceps, Pidge with sparkling glasses, a face he thought might have been meant to be Lance himself with sparkles flying off of his teeth and eyes, and someone Shiro thought was probably himself who appeared to be sparkling all over, although mostly around his butt. Shiro was already grinning at that page when he saw a mullet with a mouth underneath it in the bottom corner with a word balloon that said ‘I don’t do glitter,’ and he had to take a moment to stop giggling to himself before he could continue. Maybe exhaustion was making him hysterical. 

There were pages torn out, and several pages were dedicated to Lance's strategies for making Allura loosen up and relax, their success, or more often failures, marked next to each suggestion. Several more were dedicated to "Coranisms" and their various meanings. Some pages only contained random ideas about things that the various paladins might enjoy, like spices for Hunk, gold or optic wires for Pidge, or a description of the odor of an oil that Keith often smelt like, which Shiro recognised as the oil he liked using to clean his knife.

Then there were pages which had a variation of the heading "Plan to become closer to Shiro." Shiro read through each one, trying to think back and remember when all of them had happened.

_'Plan to make Shiro like me more: Make him laugh. Worked on Pidge?'_

There were a list of jokes, some of which bought a smile to his face as he read through the set-ups and punchlines. He even remembered a few of them, one notably coming up during a mission briefing. Lance had looked so pleased with himself that Shiro had been forced to settle into a hard glare to prevent himself from accidentally encouraging him. That page was marked as failed, with a later message that said _'Note: Spore-ball fights will make Shiro smile. So will wind?'_

There was a small picture of what Shiro presumed were supposed to be the Paladins having a spore-ball fight, even a spore-man with an antenna for a nose. The Lance-like paladin was leaping in front of a volley of spores, shield raised in a dramatic interception dive.

The next page started with _'Plan to make Shiro like me more mark 2. Small presents that aren't like full on presents, more like gestures. Also worked for Pidge. Does Shiro like cookies?'_

Shiro remembered Hunk giving him some baked goods to try, but they'd been average, even with his hunger for anything that had a flavour at all. He didn't remember Lance being around at that time. There were other gifts listed, and Shiro realised that he remembered getting some of them, or at least something like them. He hadn't thought of them as presents, just things that occasionally showed up. That happened a lot in the castle, and they couldn't all be Lance.

That page was also marked as failed, with the comment of _'I'm not a cat, and I'm not seven. I don't know Shiro well enough to give him anything. That was a stupid idea.'_

Shiro didn't know why he felt simultaneously warmed by the gesture and annoyed that he hadn't realised he was being given things, but he was. Perhaps if he'd known he could have thanked Lance properly, and this particular plan wouldn't have been marked as a failure.

_'Plan to become closer to Shiro and maybe stop him from imploding into a shower of stress: Start small. Ask Shiro what I should focus on combat-wise?'_

Shiro remembered that conversation. He'd talked to Lance about his agility and his marksmanship skills. He'd suggested Lance work on setting himself in a strong support position and taking fewer, more precise shots. He was faster than Hunk, so if his position was compromised, he could move quickly to a more advantageous position. Shiro had discovered a happy side-effect of this was that Lance was often in the best place to give the team clear information about the terrain on the few occasions that they were lucky enough to fight outside of narrow corridors or processing plants. That meant that Lance could see things that neither Keith or himself couldn't see on the front lines, letting them know when there might be something that they could to use to their advantage or any incoming threats the way Pidge often did when the mission was inside a building or base. He hadn't actually talked to Lance about that, thinking about it now.

That page was at least marked as a success, and was followed up by a list of things to work on. Shiro felt a warm smile spread across his face, remembering the way Lance came alive as he talked, listening to what Shiro said and keen to try new things. He lingered on that page a second longer before continuing.

_'Plan to be a better friend: Talk to Shiro about earth and before the Galra. Try to get him to remember good things that he can go back to afterwards, maybe.'_

_'Failed. Ended up talking about my family, had to leave before I started bawling.'_

Shiro remembered that too, sitting with Lance in the gardens and talking about the blue paladin’s home, his excessively large family, descriptions of baked goods that almost made Shiro weep with how delicious they sounded, and a beach that sounded like paradise when Lance described it. He'd felt so much closer to Lance after that conversation too, although he was annoyed with himself that he hadn't noticed that Lance was apparently on the verge of crying when he'd left for the night. He certainly wouldn't consider it a 'failed' interaction the slightest.

_'Suggested correction: Learn to shut up.'_

_'I wish I was someone worth living for. Is that a bad thing?'_

Shiro frowned at the page, thoughts little more than an unhappy buzz of static.

_'Seriously this is becoming creepy and I should stop: Convince Shiro to take me out on more missions with him, then impress him with my mad skills as a paladin.'_

_'Failed. He always picks Keith.'_

_'Suggested correction: Be more like Keith? Nope, can't do it. Fuck Keith.'_

Shiro stared at those few lines longer than he should. He didn't always pick Keith, did he? Allura often made suggestions about who went on any mission that didn't involve every paladin anyway.

That wasn't because Shiro tended to team up with Keith, was it? When Shiro chose teams, he always tried to pick for skills. Really, the only one he’d never picked as his second on a mission was Hunk. Thinking about it now that was pretty bad, but if he knew he'd need ranged support, he took the opportunity to bring Lance. True, he did bring Keith on missions a lot more often, but that was because he wanted to make sure that Keith had a well-rounded understanding of all the things that went into being a leader, from diplomacy to battle tactics. He wanted to make sure Keith was ready when the day came that… that Shiro himself became too much of a liability. Between the Galra tech he was grafted to, his missing memories that could hold some terrible threat to his team, and his other mental issues, it was only a matter of time.

Shiro hesitated, the worn inevitability of his failure running into the guilt of reading about Lance's attempts to be his friend making him far more aware that these plans were not meant for his eyes. He was looking for recent notes, so he should really have started from the back and worked his way forwards, not read through Lance's random thoughts and plans. Nodding to himself, Shiro flipped to the back of the book, planing to flip through the pages backwards until he came to the last entry.

This particular notebook design had a pocket on the back cover where timetables or cards could be kept. In this book, it held pictures. Shiro pulled out a strip of images that looked like photo-booth pictures featuring Lance, Hunk and someone that Shiro didn't know. The trio was pulling weird faces at the camera, all squeezed into a stall that was far too small for all of them to reliably fit in, particularly when Lance looked to be the smallest of the three. Shiro couldn't help but smile at the picture despite himself. There was another strip of photos in the same pocket, this one containing only Hunk and Lance, but surrounded by obnoxiously bright graphics and Korean words.

There was a third picture. Shiro stared at it, recognising his own haircut before he'd even slipped the photo out of the sleeve. The image itself was a picture of him and Lance, with a figure that Shiro was pretty sure was actually Keith in the background. Shiro looked embarrassed, his hand resting on the back of his neck as he smiled at the camera. Lance was grinning, eyes sparkling even in the photo. Looking at the angle, Shiro figured the photo must have been taken with a selfie-stick. The photo was more candid than the picture that the Garrison had taken, more authentically the person he'd been at that time. Shiro didn't recognise him, no matter how long he stared. 

He slid down the bed and curled up on his side, absently noting that Lance's pillow smelt like his shampoo and soap, unsurprisingly - would it also smell like Lance if Shiro was in his normal body? Shiro ignored the question, instead turning his focus onto the picture in his hand. He didn't remember the photo being taken at all. He didn't remember meeting Lance at all before Kerberos, and certainly not taking a picture with him. Shiro squinted at it, trying to figure out when it could possibly have been taken. If Keith was there too, then there was a chance this was during the face-to-face meetings for the mentorship program. Shiro had known fairly quickly that he wanted to mentor Keith. He'd seen so much potential in the angry, isolated boy that had come to meet with him that day. More then that, he'd seen someone who desperately needed a steadying influence not to fly off the rails or crash and burn. He didn't really remember any of the other candidates that had been there that day.

Including, apparently, Lance. The blue paladin really had met the person that Shiro used to be. 

Perhaps it was the late hour, or the fact that he'd just spent however long reading about Lance trying to connect with him, but a confusing mix of warmth and shame had taken up residence in his chest, prickling uncomfortably at his eyes. He blinked to try to sooth them, and they drifted shut as sleep drew him away. The photograph slipped from his hand to the pillow next to him, and the last thought to dart through his mind as sleep claimed him was that the citrus and wood scents went well with that really nice smell that clung to his vest. 

When Lance came back, Shiro needed to ask to borrow his body wash. Maybe his shampoo and conditioner too. Everything smelt so good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next one have completely kicked my rear >_< Especially with the cluster-bomb that has been the last few weeks. I need to pick up the pace, so again, I'm sorry if things get slower.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> Now knowing what happened to Lance, Shiro is able to fill the team in on the nature of sensory depravation torture, or "White Torture". The team storm off to their separate rooms after a tense discussion, where Shiro has a particularly vivid nightmare featuring a missing blue paladin. He decides he needs to suck it up and have a shower, where he finds his vest in Lance's closet and a school notebook filled with random things Lance had written, as well as a photo of... himself. Settling in, Shiro reads Lance's thoughts and plans until sleep finally takes him.

The smell of summer greeted Shiro as he slowly woke up the next morning, drawing his mind into a well of feeling - of warmth and freedom coloured brightly around the edges with sun-warmed wood. He was comfortable enough that he didn't want to move right away, content to just float in a soft, half-awake haze. He should check the time, though. It might be late enough for morning training and he'd be setting a bad example if he were late. But sleep was so nice. The sound of small, rapid snores from somewhere nearby proved Shiro's point; whoever it was, they also agreed that sleep was nice and it was still too early to get up.

Shiro woke up a little more when he finally thought to ask himself who else would be in his bed snoring. He carefully opened his eyes, only to be met with a sheet of paper stuck to the wall in front of him. Blinking blearily at it gradually revealed the page was a daily schedule detailing everything from morning practice down to late-night firearms training, oriented sideways so that Shiro could read it lying down. His eyes drifted up the wall to printed photographs of Lance surrounded by vaguely familiar looking people, and everything crashed back into memory.

This was Lance's room. He'd fallen asleep in Lance's bed. In Lance's body. Which he'd ended up in last night, after apparently going missing for over a month during which time Lance had been captured by the Galra and kept in a laboratory in sensory deprivation, been rescued, decided to go though the lions to try to find Shiro, apparently succeed, and managed to somehow put the black paladin into his own body instead of Shiro's.

Shiro closed his eyes and pressed his head a little further into the pillow. He'd have to get up and face everything soon, but he wanted to put it off just a little longer. But the guilt and confusion were starting to creep in now, bringing a low hum of despondence when he thought about his current situation. Everything from his own absence to Lance's letter trying to explain his reasoning to the scattering of his team last night; even his too-vivid nightmare and rifling through Lance's stuff in the middle of the night weighed heavily on him. It was like like most of this was his fault somehow, even though that didn't make sense. Something big and frightening had coiled around his friends and Shiro had missed it. He didn't know what would be better-- him not being here now or him not having left in the first place. It didn't matter either way because what he had now was by far the worst of both.

Lance trading himself for Shiro was unacceptable and he was going to do everything in his power to make things right again.

Carefully sitting up, Shiro looked around the room for the source of the noise that had set this unfortunate state of wakefulness upon him. He found the culprit on a small, fluffy pillow that Lance had probably stolen from Allura. Two of the space mice, the large yellowish one and the pink one - Platt and Chuchule, if Shiro was remembering correctly - appeared to be trying to catch up on some sleep. They must have crept into the room during the early hours of the morning after Shiro dozed off, since he was sure they usually slept in Allura's room, or at least accompanied her wherever she usually was. He hoped this didn't mean that Allura had failed to go back to bed last night.

What time was it anyway? The lights were on, but the rooms usually remained dark until either an alarm went off or the occupant was definitely awake. Sure enough, the light quickly rose now that Shiro was sitting up, leaving Shiro squinting against the brightness. The photo he'd found last night had slipped out of his fingers and was now resting against the pillow, somehow untouched by Shiro turning in his sleep. Without the edge of exhaustion clouding his perception the image no longer left him feeling so despondent, although there was still some shame at not remembering it being taken at all. Which was ridiculous, of course, he couldn't possibly remember when every photo of him had been taken.

So if the photo was there, where was the notebook?

Patting around on the blankets yielded the book itself, still warm from where he'd slept on top of it. The notebook was none the worse for the experience, so Shiro retrieved the photo and carefully slipped it back into the cover, letting his hands drift over the last page gently, as though it were Lance himself in the pages. A familiar longing pressed against his chest and Shiro allowed himself a moment to indulge it before it needed to be locked away.

He'd fallen asleep before he'd learned anything more about Lance's state of mind after his capture, too distracted with just learning about Lance. He hadn't realised that Lance was actively trying to get closer to him, or that the young man had won Pidge over at some point with a combination of jokes and gifts of cookies, or that he was observant enough to be able to isolate the specific smell of Keith's preferred cleaning oil. He knew that Lance didn't always keep track of what should be happening and when, but he hadn't known that Lance made so many to-do lists or had a schedule set up to be the first thing he saw each morning. Was it because he tended to forget things and needed to make lists to remember what he should be doing, or was he just trying to be more organised and hold on to some kind of routine where he could? Shiro would have guessed the first, but he wasn't really sure anymore. What else didn't he know about the people around him?

His vest had been in Lance's closet.

Flopping back down onto the pillows, Shiro gave the arch above the bed an annoyed pout. It didn't help anything, but it made him feel a bit better while he gathered himself together, setting aside his nightmares, guilt, longings, and anything else he had inside of him that might prevent him from being able to face everyone and give them his best. 

That done, he sat up and looked around for a clock of some kind, picking out an Altean alarm clock sitting on the desk.

Surprise rang through Shiro's mind as he registered just how late it was. He slid out of the bed, scrambling over to the desk to take a closer look. He might not quite understand how many dobashes were in a varga, but he'd gotten good at knowing what the digits for zero to nine looked like and the way time was written. The glowing cyan digits still said exactly what he thought they had, which meant that he'd slept in, and not even just compared to how early he usually rose - he'd slept in enough that he'd completely missed the team’s morning run and he'd miss breakfast if he didn't hurry. He hadn't slept this late since entering the castle unless he was injured.

"Dammit," he mumbled under his breath, scrambling to the closet to try to find something to wear. Lance's regular clothes were still in Shiro's room, but the blue paladin armour was here; he could throw that on and race down to breakfast. He hadn't actually paid attention to the day or found out if there was combat training after breakfast, but paladin armour should be a safe bet. Decision made, Shiro changed as quickly as he could, racing out of Lance's room and down to the dining room, still clipping his vambrace into place.

Both Hunk and Keith were conspicuously absent when he entered the room. Pidge had her laptop set up at the table, absently shoveling food goo into her mouth with her eyes fixed on the screen. Coran stood behind her, looking over her shoulder, and Allura sat at the end of the table, eyes drooping as she scrolled up on a data pad and ate without enthusiasm. All three of them turned in unison to look at Shiro as soon as he entered. 

"Morning," He said, ignoring the unsettling feeling of suddenly being the center of attention. "Sorry that I missed our morning run, I overslept." He paused a beat as a question occurred to him. "Do we still have a morning run?"

"Normally," Pidge said flatly. "Both Keith and Hunk were no-shows though, so I decided to get an early start on my research." She dropped her spoon in her bowl with a clatter that managed to convey frustration and disdain all at once, pushing her chair back from the table and standing with purpose. She walked over to Shiro and hugged him lightly, letting her forehead rest against Lance's breastplate. "I didn't say it last night, but it's really good to have you back, okay? Even if the circumstances are weird."

Shiro let out a shaky breath, not quite realising how much he'd needed to hear someone say that until that moment. "Thank you. We will fix this," he promised, partly to Pidge, mostly to himself.

"Yeah, we will," Pidge agreed, stepping back. That hard determination was back in her eyes. "Coran and I have started going over everything I stole from the computer systems during Lance's rescue."

"Good," Shiro nodded, moving away to get himself something to eat. "I really think our best bet for working out what happened is knowing what the facility Lance was kept in was used for and why the Galra imprisoned him the way they did." He pulled the trigger on the food goo nozzle, grimacing as it landed in the bowl with a gooey, thick sound. If the bland taste didn't kill your appetite, the sounds would make a valiant effort. "The first time he saw 'me' was immediately after he was rescued, so that's the most logical place to start. On top of that, the Galra wouldn't just capture a paladin and hide him away for no reason." Shiro turned back to the table, moving to sit across from Pidge's laptop, next to Allura. "Wouldn't someone use that to get a promotion or help one of the factions you were talking about last night?"

Allura made a distracted noise, as though it just occurred to her that she might have some input into the conversation. "Yes, that would have made most sense..." She trailed off, looking over at the doorway.

Shiro followed her gaze, spotting Keith just outside of the dining room. Their eyes met, Keith's filling with relief before moving on to scan over each person in the room. They lingered too long on the empty chairs and bowls of goo, expression falling into a disappointed frown that told Shiro Keith wanted to see Hunk, the only one not here. Keith's expression relaxed back to neutral as he walked into the room proper.

"I came to get you this morning, but you weren't in your room," Keith said to Shiro, a hint of accusation in his tone. "Or in the training room, or any of the other places I looked."

"Oh, Right." Shiro rubbed at the back of his neck, already feeling the heat of an embarrassed flush. "I went to Lance's room last night and kind of slept there."

Keith stared at him, a confused crease forming between his eyebrows. "Why?"

Shiro took a moment to decide how to reply. "I'm not sure. I guess it was more comfortable there. Plus, I told Hunk I'd try to keep up Lance's routine."

The look of confusion didn't quite fade but Keith seemed to accept his reasoning.

"Keith," Pidge spoke up, walking over to him with her head turned down in contrition. "About last night. I'm sorry about what I said, I wasn't angry with you."

"Yes you were," Keith pointed out.

"Okay yes, I was furious," Pidge said, exasperated, "but what I'm trying to say is that I was way more angry with myself than you." She fiddled with her glasses before continuing, re-settling the frames across her nose. "And I was taking it out on you, which wasn't fair. So, I'm sorry."

"You were right to be angry," Keith replied. "I wasn't... I was thinking more about what had happened to Lance and how the team was going to keep working together than about trying to understand what he was feeling." He sighed and shook his head, resting a hand on his hip as he switched his weight into a more open posture. "I completely forgot what you'd told me and I didn't think about how what I was saying might be interpreted. I know I need to work on that. So... yeah, I'm sorry as well, to you and to Hunk. Lance as well, when we get him back."

"I was so happy that Lance was back that I didn't want to bring up anything bad or say anything that might make him go away again or break down." Pidge folded her arms across her chest, hands tucked between her body and forearms. "I didn't even try to bring up anything from before he was captured or ask how he was feeling, I was too scared. I shouldn't be angry at you when I didn't even try." She threw her arms out and leaned back, a clear invitation for a hug. "Awkward hug it out?"

"Awkward hug it out," Keith agreed, closing the distance between them. His hands hovered over Pidge's back for a moment before settling into position across her shoulders, Pidge taking her usual low-hug position. They simultaneously patted each other on the back three times before stepping back and giving each other a small nod.

Shiro tried not to grin at them too much as Pidge returned to her seat, sliding her half-eaten bowl of food goo away from her. He wondered if she carefully planned out the things she needed to say to people the night before and rushed to get them said first thing in the morning, imagining her sitting up in the middle of the night with her hair everywhere, shouting 'Wait, _that's_ what I should have said! I have to say that as soon as I see them tomorrow!' It was a cute mental picture.

Keith watched her sit before turning to address Shiro again. He took a sharp breath in and breathed out slowly, relaxing as he did. "I had a thought about you and Lance swapping places this morning while I was looking for you. Whatever happened, it looked like the Black Lion was involved somehow. I didn't get anything from Red about why they activated, but I might be able to get something from Black." Pure displeasure twisted his mouth, as though his next words tasted bitter to him. "Or more likely, you might get something."

Pidge's hands froze over the keyboard.

"It's worth a try," Shiro agreed, turning to Allura for confirmation.

Allura nodded. "If your bond with the Black Lion might help shed some light on all this, then I think it's worth trying." She stood, a look of uncertainty flickering across her face before she continued. "I might have found something in the archives last night that could explain the unusual behavior that the Lions have been exhibiting, but it's only theoretical speculation. I would like to see if the Black Lion can offer any insights before bringing it up." She looked down at her hands. "I feel that I have been wrong too often these past few days," she said, disheartened.

Pidge grumbled and closed her laptop, tucking it under her arm as she stood. "Alright, if we're doing this, let's go do it."

"We?" Shiro asked, only to be ignored.

"Allura, can you let Hunk know what's happening?" Keith asked.

"I'll put out a message on the loudspeaker," Coran said. "He can decide if he wants to come or not."

"Come?" Shiro asked, trailing out of the dining room behind everyone. "Guys, I'm just going to try and bond with Black. This isn't a mission."

* * *

Black's cockpit was large, but Shiro still felt like it was too cramped with everyone piled in. Pidge sat on the ground to Shiro's left, her back against his chair as she typed on her laptop while Coran stood above her, arms crossed and a serious look on his face. Keith stood to Shiro's right just behind his chair, with Allura a little further right and a little further back again. Even the mice had taken up places on Black's console.

Hunk leaned against the back wall like a storm-cloud that happened to also be pouting, threatening thunder, lightning, or rain. He hadn't said a word since he stomped into the hanger moments after Shiro had arrived, clearly ignoring the looks Keith kept shooting him. Keith himself was visibly struggling to find the right words to say to break the silence between them, but he'd held off on speaking so far.

"I would normally do something like this alone," Shiro said, protesting one last time.

Keith shook his head. "Not happening."

"Last time you were in the Black Lion alone you vanished without a trace," Pidge said dryly from below. "Excuse us all for being a bit paranoid."

Shiro looked over the side of his pilot's seat to a mop of brown hair that stubbornly refused to meet his eyes. He ruffled it anyway, earning him a halfhearted swat that he avoided by sitting back. "Okay, fair enough," he said. "I don't know how well this will work with everyone else here, but I guess we'll see." He ran a hand over Black's console and slid back, sinking into his pilot's chair and closing his eyes. The feeling of everyone watching him was disconcerting, but he pushed it to the back of his mind for now.

"Tell me what happened," he said to Black, soft but holding the edge of a command.

Stars rushed into view around Shiro, flying past his head in a dizzying flurry of lights. He was in Black, in his own body with his hands on the controls as a fierce battle raged around them.

_The battle against Zarkon_ , Shiro recognised. He wasn't just in Black then, he was in _Voltron_. The emperor himself was suspended in the void like a dark gash in the fabric of space. Voltron swung their blade, the metal crashing into the thick plated armour that protected Zarkon, biting into it but not splitting it. Shiro jammed his bayard into the port that Black showed to him, twisting to lock the weapon in place and igniting Voltron's sword into a brilliant, burning saber.

Zarkon's armour finally broke under the strain, shattering as the blade dug deep into the flesh it had once protected. But unlike last time, Shiro saw dark, oil-slick-black tendrils connecting the emperor to the shattered armour. They pulsed rhythmically with light that flowed outwards from his body and sparked through the inside of the armour, pooling where his weapons, boosters, and wings had been. As though Zarkon had been both the pilot and the power source for the armour.

"Is that Zarkon's quintessence?" he asked without expecting an answer. His voice echoed strangely as the battlefield faded away, only the Black Lion and the fallen emperor hanging in an endless field of violet stardust.

As though answering his question, Zarkon's eyes opened, twin yellow stars that focused squarely on Shiro. He gasped and pulled back, feeling as though he were pinned to his chair by the force of the ancient Galra’s stare. Zarkon stretched a hand forwards and a ghost-like image of himself pulled free of the wreck of his armour and flesh to reach far beyond the limits of his own body. The translucent form moved too fast over the space between them to be natural, reaching through Black to grasp at Shiro. _Inside_ of him, he realised, as the gnarled hand reached into his body as if there were no armour, cloth, or skin in its way. Zarkon grabbed hold of something just in front of his spinal cord, something that hummed and twanged as the emperor struggled to get a grip on it and pulled.

It felt like Zarkon had seized his heart. No, not his heart, or even his soul, but something that sat between the two - his life. His quintessence. Shiro recoiled further at the realisation, desperately trying to pull himself free of Zarkon's grip as all the implications of their current situation fell into place. It really was Zarkon's quintessence flooding into his shattered armour, which meant that the weapon itself was slowly sapping his life. Zarkon needed more energy if he was going to survive. The Lions worked by finding a pilot with quintessence that matched their own, and Zarkon was the former black paladin. His continued bond with Black was proof enough that his quintessence was close enough to Shiro's own that they could both pilot the Black Lion.

Close enough that Shiro's quintessence could potentially be stolen to keep Zarkon alive a little longer.

Shiro struggled, grabbing at the spectral arm that was plunged into his chest and pulling, trying to get those claws out of his essence. He could feel them inside him, dragging across his spine, sliding through his lungs in a way that made him want to take his insides out and wash them. Zarkon held fast, claws slipping against that thing inside of Shiro that he was trying to draw out and feed upon.

There was an echoing, mechanical roar that split the sky with lightning. Shiro felt jaws clamp onto the back of his neck and drag him backwards, pulling him out of Black's cockpit and away from Zarkon. The wounded Galra snarled with a low hiss that resembled words and scraped against Shiro's nerves. Zarkon scrabbled forwards to maintain a grip on Shiro, who was pulled back further, the tension in his chest almost unbearable until he was sure he heard a rending sound as he was finally pulled free of Zarkon's grip. The fallen emperor roared with rage and pounced after him, claws raking through his body and struggling to catch him again. Shiro kicked out, boots colliding with solid muscle and bone as he scrambled backwards, dragged by what he now realised was the Black Lion.

Black dragged him back further again, straining to pull him out of reach as Zarkon pursued, hunched over and feral - snarling and clawing at any part of Shiro he could reach. He crouched, body contracting and coiling with pure power waiting to be unleashed, before he surged forwards, leaping at Shiro with claws outstretched. Black pulled, throwing their head back just as Zarkon grabbed hold of Shiro's hips, and a tug-of war began between the pair. Shiro could only desperately kick at his attacker and struggle to get free.

Zarkon swung one huge hand across Shiro's chest as Black shifted their grip. The world around him spun, stars wheeling as he was knocked clear of both of them. He fell and rolled, using the momentum to gather his legs under him and race forwards as soon as he felt something solid beneath his feet, phantom breath at his heels. Claws raked across the back of his legs and he was sent tumbling again, reality falling away from him as he span through the stars and out of the emperor's grasp.

Darkness filled the edges of his vision, dizziness overwhelmed him, and his mind started shutting down to protect itself from the sheer nothingness around him. Shiro's awareness retreated from the untethered feeling of losing consciousness and fell back towards his Lion. The battle field, Zarkon, even this past version of himself faded, and he was left standing in an open plain of stars and lightning with a dark, nebulous form sitting beside him.

"Is that what happened?" Shiro asked the Black Lion. He looked down at his hands, his Galran prosthetic back in it's normal place in this plane. He didn't look like Lance here, he looked the way he remembered instead. "Is that how I lost my body as well, or only my mind?"

The Black Lion tilted their head as though trying to understand the source of a sound and gave a short, mournful roar. Shiro reached out to offer his lion some comfort, pressing his hand against the spectral form of the Black Lion and gently stroking the darkness.

"Please, tell me about Lance."

Black bowed their head and vanished into a whirlwind of sparks. The scene around Shiro rippled and changed, the stars fading out to be replaced by overhead lights. Shiro recognised the new location as Black's hanger in the castle, exactly where he was in reality. The view was different though, Shiro noticed as he looked down at the ground far below him. He wasn't looking out of his cockpit, he was looking out through Black's eyes.

Seated before him on the ground was Lance, looking small and weightless through Black's perceptions. More than just weightless- he looked somehow completely hollow, as though there were nothing inside of him. Shiro ached to reach out and gather Lance into his arms, hold him close and fill the emptiness with himself. As though pouring what little was left of Shiro into another person might somehow be enough to save them both.

Black leaned down towards Lance, bringing his form into clearer focus. Their eyes met, Lance's wet with tears, and an unspoken understanding passed between them that Shiro could only get a sense of through his connection with Black. They both wanted him back and that shared goal sparked between them, connecting them further.

_It's not right without him, you know?_

Shiro watched helplessly, dread growing within him as Black drew closer again, insistent and imposing. Lance responded by unfolding further, reaching out and opening himself up to Black's influence, allowing the lion to see some hidden part of himself that Shiro felt he should turn away from and pretend he hadn’t seen; a yearning and a glow that Shiro was afraid to think about or try to understand. The conversation took place with no words spoken, a back-and-forth that he was struggling to understand through Black's senses. He saw Lance offering himself up to Black's mercy, wishing to find Shiro and willing to trade places with him if need be. The feeling was indistinct, but what little Shiro could get made his chest feel both too full and painfully empty all at once. Lance wanted the opportunity to find Shiro wherever he was, and he'd do it with or without help. There was a spark of something within Lance, an inner light and resolve flickering against the emptiness and highlighting the person Shiro knew Lance could be, weak but still there.

A whirlwind picked up around Shiro-in-Black and Lance, and the hanger fell away as the familiar stars that filled Shiro's connection with the Black Lion fell into place. Each of the Lions pushed inwards to stop Black and Lance, and only the sheer force of the Black Lion's presence held them at bay. Things became hazy and chaotic around Shiro as his own senses struggled to comprehend what was happening, his sense of balance protesting bitterly as he went from a large body in normal space to something that was either enormous or human sized, he couldn't be sure. All around him was fire and ice, leaves and dirt, smoke and fog, stone and wood, and though they spun into a chaotic storm against the edges of Black they didn't reach Lance himself. The brunet broke through what Shiro thought of as the floor, the surface rippling around him as though it were a swimming pool made of starlight instead of water and he was climbing out of it. His skin glowed with reflected light as he flicked his hair back and looked around, but everything else, from his clothes to his eyes, seemed dull and flat. Electricity and starlight flooded into him as the wind curled around his arms and lead him through the chaos and into the whirlwind around them. Lance followed steadily, unflinching even as he began to climb the winds like a stairway into the night sky, ignoring the bits of himself that were sheared off and lost.

"Stop," Shiro gasped, only realising he'd spoken aloud when he heard Lance's voice in his ears.

The scene blinked out and Shiro fell to his knees as his vision was thrown back into his mental projection of himself, the change disorienting even in this unreal place. He stood up and turned, shouting wildly at the air around him. "Why would you do that? Why would you let him go out there alone? Why would you _help_ him trade himself for me?"

The dark shape was back, large paws silent across the stars as it walked towards him. It tilted its head curiously as he spoke. The answer came on the wind, not in words but in an impression of ideas.

_'His choice.'_

"What does that have to do with anything?" Shiro shouted back, struggling to keep his voice under control. "Lance wasn't in a position to make that kind of choice! He'd just been rescued from the Galra, he'd been tortured, he was still suffering from that trauma! He wasn't in his right mind." The feeling that everything was wrong buzzed through his veins again, made worse by the fact he couldn't shake the idea that the Black Lion had sent Lance out deliberately, using Lance to fix their mistakes or accomplish something they couldn't do themselves. After all, if Lance was going to throw himself towards Shiro anyway, why not use him? Especially if he might be able to prevent Black's second pilot from being completely consumed by their first. 

Black pressed their head towards Shiro, who wasn't sure whether he should push the lion away or move in closer and seek comfort. Perhaps if he was closer, he could still convince the Black Lion to help him. He settled for placing a hand upon the Lion's forehead. 

"Help me find him. Help me bring him home and give him back his body," Shiro begged breathlessly.

Black shook their head.

"No? What do you mean no?" Shiro tried not to yell or get angry, but it was difficult around the pain in his chest and the hum of his blood urging him to lash out and fight. "He shouldn't even be out there, I need to find him!"

A figure made of starlight formed in front of Black, their shape recognisable to Shiro as a mirror version of himself. His pulse jumped, panic spiking through him at coming face-to-face with himself again.

_'Shiro wasn't in a position to make that kind of choice,' _the star-filled doppelganger said, a perfect echo of his own voice aside from his name, which was taken from Keith. _'He'd just been rescued from the Galra, he'd been tortured, he was still suffering from that trauma! He wasn't in his right mind.'___

__Shiro recoiled as his star-clone dissipated into a wisp of smoke. Black's astral form stepped backwards and dissolved into the darkness, leaving Shiro alone._ _

__With a sigh, he opened his eyes to the real world, coming face-to-face with Coran. He started backwards and yelped in surprise, then covered his mouth with both hands when a shriek came out instead. Coran flailed backwards, colliding awkwardly with the console. They stared at each other with wide eyes._ _

__"What the heck was _that_?" Pidge’s alarmed shout cut through the strange stand-off between Shiro and Coran._ _

__"Sorry," Shiro apologised, unfolding from where he'd scrambled into the backrest of his chair. "I was just surprised that you were so close."_ _

__"Yes, well." Coran straightened up, stroking his moustache unconsciously. "You shouted 'stop' rather loudly, and you didn't exactly look like you were having a peaceful meditation there. I wasn't sure if I should be shaking you awake or not."_ _

__"I suggested 'not' as a general rule." Pidge added._ _

__"Did you see anything?" Keith asked, capturing Shiro's attention._ _

__Allura watched him over Keith's shoulder with a careful curiosity and although Shiro didn't know for sure what she was expecting him to say, it was clear she was expecting to hear something specific. He took a moment to try and gather the words to relay what he'd just experienced to the team._ _

__"I saw the fight with Zarkon," he began. "He tried to take my energy to keep himself alive, and I got kind of... knocked away in the struggle?" He shrugged, not sure how to adequately explain. "Kind of like Black and Zarkon were fighting for my soul, and it got lost somewhere during the tussle, only it was my quintessence instead of my soul, I think."_ _

__"Is that why you went missing?" Pidge asked, her head popping up over the chair next to him._ _

__Shiro opened his mouth to answer, but closed it again when he remembered that he hadn't gotten a firm answer to that from Black. "I don't actually know," he admitted. He looked between Allura and Coran. "Would that have made me disappear?"_ _

__"Goodness no," Coran responded, sounding scandalised. "Without any quintessence at all you'd be very much dead, not disappeared. Unless you were disintegrated, but I assure you we found absolutely no particles that indicated a large human male had been atomised in some way."_ _

__"And we did check." Pidge muttered darkly._ _

__"Unless you were immediately placed into a stasis pod of some kind," Corran added thoughtfully. He tapped his chin a couple of times in thought. "You might even live if you were given enough energy and time to rebuild some of your quintessence."_ _

__"That's... Something then," Shiro said._ _

__"And if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go check on all our healing and stasis pods now," Coran announced, hands darting around nervously. "Just in case you've somehow ended up in one and I managed to miss it." He stepped carefully over Pidge and walked out past Hunk, who watched him go before zeroing back in on Shiro._ _

__"Did you see Lance?" he asked, and Shiro realised that this was the first time he'd heard the yellow paladin speak all morning._ _

__"I did," Shiro said, putting aside questions about whether his body was still alive to focus on Black and Lance's interaction. He did his best to explain exactly what he'd seen, doing well until he got up to having to explain Lance connecting with the Black Lion. Even as he tried to describe what he saw, he could see the confusion on everyone's faces._ _

__"I don't think it was a normal pilot-lion bond." Shiro said, trying to provide something more concrete, or at least some kind of context. "It seemed more like Lance became part of Black for a moment. And then he moved above it somehow, but that's where I said 'stop', so I didn't see any more," he finished sheepishly._ _

__Pidge groaned. "Why do I feel like I know less now than I did before?" She turned towards Allura. "Did any of that make sense to you?"_ _

__"Perhaps," Allura said, looking troubled. "But we can speak of it outside of the Black Lion."_ _

__Hunk pushed himself away from the doorframe and turned to follow Coran out without another word. Keith watched him leave, lips pressed into a thin, unhappy line before starting after him._ _

__"Hunk, wait!" he called out._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Okay, Chapter 12 can go up after Chapter 13 is written
> 
> Also me: (Re-writes the first half of Chapter 13 for the seventh time) AAARGH!
> 
> Sorry for the delay. I'll try to get 13 as soon as possible, and also do that whole replying to comments that I've been neglecting for weeks now. I am sorry - I love and read all your comments, often several times, and I want to respond with something a little more personal than a "Thank you so much T_T"


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> After waking up in Lance's room, Shiro agreed to connect with the Black Lion and ask them precisely what happened. After getting a play-by-play of the events leading up to him being lost in the astral plane, Shiro thinks to narrow his question down to what, precisely, happened to Lance.
> 
> Hunk is still clearly furious with the team, so Keith sets his mind towards making things right again...

"Hunk, wait!" Keith called out, catching up to the man in question before he could get too far away from the Black Lion. He placed a hand on Hunk's shoulder, hoping that he wouldn’t be shaken off this time and Hunk's resolve to give everyone the silent treatment would waver enough for him to stop and listen, even if he didn't say anything to acknowledge Keith's presence. He didn't, and didn’t turn his body to face Keith head-on the way he normally would either, just rotated enough to be in profile.

"I just wanted to say that you were right," Keith said once it became clear that Hunk wouldn't say anything. "I could have changed the subject or said something different to Lance, but it didn't even occur to me. I'm sorry, and I'll try to do better in the future."

Out of the corner of his eye, Keith saw Pidge and Allura exiting the Black Lion. Pidge glanced over to him, taking in the scene quickly, and whatever she saw in that moment made her take Allura gently by the arm and pull her to one side, talking quietly in a way that indicated she didn't plan to eavesdrop. Keith remained focused on Hunk, the low murmur of hushed conversation falling away as the girls stepped towards the Blue Lion's hangar, leaving a silence hanging across the room that felt like it lasted forever before Hunk replied.

"Why are you apologising to me?" he asked, an uncharacteristic hardness in his voice as he turned away from Keith. "I'm not the one you hurt."

"Aren't you?" Keith asked insistently. "You're acting like you're hurt, and if I hurt you, I want to apologise and try to make it right."

"I'm not hurt," Hunk replied, shoulders rising with tension. "I'm furious. I _want_ to be angry on Lance's behalf since he's not here, but even if he were he probably wouldn't be angry at anyone in the castle. I want to be angry at _you_ because I wish you'd thought about what someone else might want before telling one of _our_ friends you'd rather have someone else here, someone more important to you instead of someone important to me, but that's not fair either, is it?"

Guilt pricked at Keith's chest, making it hard to say anything to that, or even really breathe. He'd tried to do the right thing and ended up doing the exact opposite. Hunk should have been able to rely on Keith as a leader and friend, but Keith had let him down. But he couldn’t find the words to try and tell him that before Hunk continued.

"I can't be angry because I'm not supposed to be that kind of person." His voice broke, tears beginning to form in his eyes. "I'm not allowed to rage and break down or shout, but I'm so mad that it's choking me."

Not 'allowed' to? That didn't make any sense. "What are you talking about?" he asked, confused. It came out sounding more annoyed than he'd intended, though, so he deliberately softened it before continuing. "Of course you're allowed to be angry. It'd be kind of hypocritical of me to say anyone couldn't be."

Lan- Shiro emerged from the Black Lion and froze, gawking at the pair of them as though he'd been caught sneaking out of class. He stood awkwardly under the mechanical giant, eyes darting between Keith, Hunk, and the door beyond.

"No, _I'm_ not allowed to be _this kind_ of angry." Hunk ignored Shiro and turned fully to face Keith, arms held out beside him in a gesture that opened his body up and invited Keith to look. "Look at me, I've been told again and again that I shouldn't let myself get mad like this for as long as I remember! And that's fine, because I don't _want_ to be the kind of angry that wants to shout or hurt my friends. But I'm furious at you for making me feel that way, which just makes the whole thing worse!"

Shiro walked carefully around them, giving them a wide berth rather than stepping into the tense aura around the pair. He moved far enough away to make it clear he wasn't part of their conversation and wasn't trying to listen, but remained close enough that he could intervene if he was called. Keith only spared him a quick glance, unsure whether he was more touched or annoyed by Shiro's protectiveness, before returning his focus to Hunk. He stepped back, looking the huge Samoan up and down, eyes following the lines of Hunk's broader, stronger form until they settled on his face, normally kind but now hardened by bitterness. Why would Hunk be told that he shouldn't get 'this kind' of angry? Did he mean wanting to shout or punch things, or just anger at a friend? Keith knew that he was prone to anger, especially when he was younger, but he'd never been told he wasn't allowed to feel certain kinds of anger. What did that even mean?

"I'm not an angry person and I don't like being mad," Hunk continued, letting his hands drop to his sides before Keith could formulate the question. "So now I don't know how to deal with the kind of anger where I want to make someone else hurt too. I don't know where to direct it. Should I be mad at you and Pidge? Should I be mad at Lance? The Black Lion? The Galra? Me?" He made a frustrated noise and rubbed at his eyes.

Keith stepped forwards and carefully placed a hand on Hunk's shoulder, who, thankfully, didn't shrug it off or knock him away this time either. He still thought going in for a hug might be a step too far, but he was surprised by how much he wanted to do just that. No matter what Hunk said, Keith had clearly hurt him and that was something he'd never wanted to do, even if it was inevitable that he'd mess up at some point. The fear of losing Hunk, having him withdraw his affection from Keith completely, sparked a pathetic desperation in him that he didn't want to admit to and left him stuck between pulling back from Hunk entirely to avoid a possible painful rejection in the future, and the desire to cling and vehemently refuse to let go. He pushed both urges down and focused on coming up with something he could say or do that might make Hunk feel better, might help heal some of the hurt. Nothing came to mind, and now Hunk looked like he was on the verge of walking away while Keith was trying not to panic.

"Do you have to be angry at me?" Keith asked quickly. Hunk narrowed his eyes, so Keith hurried on. "No, I mean - I don't mean you _shouldn't_ be mad at me if that's what you are. I mean, you have a right to feel what you feel. Even if it's not what you want to feel right now, you allowed to be angry. So it's okay if you want to shout or punch things or- whatever." Keith cut himself off before suggesting that if Hunk wanted to fight or to shout at him personally, he'd happily allow it. Even if he didn't believe that he deserved the full weight of Hunk's ire in this situation, having the team as unified as they could be in their search for Lance and having Hunk back and talking to him was far more important than his own pride or sense of fairness. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing Hunk right now. "You're allowed to have a breakdown too."

"No," Hunk said with surprising bitterness. "It's okay if _you_ do it. Or Shiro or Allura, or even Pidge. Everyone knows that you're all really brave and heroic and stuff." His hands danced through the air a moment to emphasise his point before falling, still and defeated, by his sides. "It's not okay if I do, because I'm not a brave man having a bad time. I'm a wreck happening in slow motion."

Keith could only stare in disbelief, mind blanking as he tried to process that statement. "What?" he managed to ask, as though that could sum up every question he had. How could Hunk think, for even a moment, that he wasn't seen as a hero? He was brave and loyal and kind, all the qualities that a real hero should have. He had to be able to see them in himself, right? "No, you're wrong-"

"Yeah, well, that's what it feels like right now," Hunk snapped, some of the bite rising back in his voice before it fell away again. He didn't even bother to try to scrub at his face when more tears fell.

"No! That's not it, you-" Keith shouted, grabbing both of Hunk's shoulders now as he struggled to make himself understood. "You think _I'm_ brave? I don't know if you and Lance decided to divvy up the being-there-for-teammate duties of if you just picked me to focus on, but you were literally there with me when I was so angry I couldn't even speak! I mean, you held me in your _lap_ when I was crying! Why would you ever think I wouldn't do the same for you in a heartbeat if you'd let me?" He paused, gasping for air for a moment, hoping that he didn't sound as desperate as he was starting to feel. Why did words have to be so hard? "If you're angry, just be angry, even if it's at me! I know you're hurt, whatever you say, and I can't make things right if you don't-"

"You want me to be angry at you?" Hunk interrupted, taking both of Keith's hands and sliding them off his shoulders with a gentleness that felt completely at odds with the hard edge to his words. Before Keith could respond or try to grab hold of him again, Hunk reached into his pocket, pulled out a folded up piece of paper and smacked it into the left side of Keith's chest, leaving his hand over it to hold it in place. Keith saw Shiro flinch and step forwards but didn’t react to it. He looked at Hunk's hand dumbly, only processing that it was over his heart again, the way it had been when he'd helped Hunk through his panic attack, when he'd been allowed to help Hunk the way Lance had done in the past.

His heart beat too fast back then too, but now each 'ba-thump' was accompanied by a needle-stab of pain at seeing Hunk mad at him and not knowing how to make it stop. He carefully took hold of the paper, brushing against Hunk's hand as he did so. Hunk lingered a little longer, let go, and took a couple of steps back, watching as Keith pulled the paper away from his chest and unfolded it before he walked away and began pacing. The paper was smooth and weirdly thin, covered in a light blue grid. There was writing on both sides, a messy scrawl in blue pen that Keith could only just read.

 _'Hey Hunk,'_ Was that... Lance's handwriting?

_'First off, I want to tell you that whatever bad thing happened, I didn't mean for it to happen...'_

Keith read, awareness of his surroundings fading as he focused on understanding the words. He forced his way through paragraphs of hopelessness and fear, each carrying Lance's assurances that he somehow deserved to feel that way. Keith hadn't known any of this.

No, that wasn't quite right. He _knew_ that something bad had happened, but he hadn't comprehended just _how_ bad when Lance had tried to explain. He still barely understood, even with the letter going over things in more depth that Lance had already told him yesterday. He hadn't gotten it then but understanding of what Lance had been trying to say was building, his thoughts expressed to Hunk more openly and eloquently than Keith had ever been allowed to see. He was never _supposed_ to see these thoughts, the letter asked Hunk not to show Keith twice; once explicitly and a second time indirectly.

Why would Hunk give this to him? Was it just to make Keith read the words himself? Was this what he'd meant when he said he wanted to 'hurt my friends' and 'make someone else hurt too'? But then who was Hunk trying to hurt here - Keith or Lance?

Keith wasn't really sure and it bothered him more than he wanted to admit.

The letter read almost like a suicide note. Lance wrote as though he would be easy to get over and replace, but Keith wanted tear the fabric of space apart to find him. He'd wanted to do the same for Shiro, just break everything open until they found him and bought him home. Yet Lance was the one who'd managed to actually get Shiro back to them, had given Keith's only family back to him (albeit in a weird way) using some method that Keith couldn't even begin to understand. He'd been biting down on any traces of relief and joy because Lance's disappearance and Hunk's disappointment in him, personally, soured it, tainted it beyond recognition. Now guilt and fury were coiling around inside his stomach, burning away everything else.

If Keith had known what Lance was planning he'd have stopped him, wouldn't he? No matter how sure he was that he would have, there was an ugly thread of doubt that said maybe he wouldn't have. How could he look Hunk in the eye when he was trying to suppress the crawling fear that he'd lose Shiro again? How was he supposed to feel about this, when Shiro was here and safe but Lance was gone?

He turned on his heel and marched towards the door, jaw clenched tight, barely holding back his emotions. He wasn't sure exactly where he was going to go, only that he felt like he needed to move. One of the training rooms, perhaps. Hunk stopped as he strode past, and Keith found himself slowing to a stop as well.

Hunk had chosen to share this information with him despite Lance asking him not to. That meant something.

He pivoted on the spot to face Hunk, holding the letter out in front of him. "I don't know what you want me to say." He said, teeth barely holding the horrible lump of emotions inside him. "Lance... tried to explain this to me, and I didn't get it at all. I'm still not sure I understand. I'm sorry that any of this happened, and that I failed, but I can't change that."

Hunk carefully took the letter from Keith's hand and tucked it back into his pocket. "I know."

"Then why-" Keith snarled before snapping his mouth shut and taking a deliberate breath. He wasn't mad at Hunk, he reminded himself, even if part of him wanted to shout that it was unfair for Hunk to do this to him. It was just frustration at not knowing what he should say or do. "The only thing I can do is apologise and promise to find him again. I don't know what else you want me to do."

"Neither do I." Hunk admitted quietly, hunching over and staring at the ground, as though something heavy had settled onto his shoulders. "Just... don't apologise to _me_. Not right now, while I'm still mad at you and I can't honestly say that I forgive you or even accept your apology. It'll fade eventually, but right now I just- I can't."

Keith felt his anger wilt into sad resignation and immediately missed it. Anger was easier, it made you want to act; resignation left you lifeless and guilt was paralysing. The idea of not being able to fix things right now pricked at him until his skin felt itchy. "Is that why you wanted me to read the letter?" he asked.

Hunk huffed, a grimace twisting his face. "I'm not completely sure why I did that. I think I wanted someone else to have to carry this as well." He waved a hand at his pocket, expression settling into a scowl. "I wanted you to _know_ , and I didn't think I could say it clearly enough for you to understand. You're not great at listening sometimes."

Keith winced, but decided not to say anything to that, instead carefully trying to put his suspicions into words. "I thought it was because you wanted to hurt me?" he suggested, annoyed when it came out as a question.

Hunk's head jerked up, a horrified look crossing his face. Keith would have found it comical if it weren't for how awful he felt. Here Hunk was, worried about being angry enough to want to hurt someone when the very idea of it was enough to make him freak out. "Oh. I mean... yes, that's probably the reason."

Keith nodded. "Okay. Then... tell me the second it's okay for me to apologise properly, and I'll do it again."

Hunk managed a small, strained smile that was somehow worse than his earlier scowl. "Look, I'm sure that when I stop being angry, you won't have to apologise, okay? Just... stop it. It isn't helping your case."

"Okay," Keith said, nodding and stepping back awkwardly. "Okay. I'm gonna go train for a while. Maybe you can practice at the shooting gallery, if you want?" Hunk winced, and Keith immediately realised he'd said the wrong thing. "Or not. Wherever. I'm going to go now."

Keith turned on the spot, movements feeling robotic as he strode towards the door. Shiro watched him approach with an expression of discomfort and dejection that looked familiar on Lance’s face. It made Keith feel all the more wrong, both knowing he'd seen Lance look that way enough to recognise it and knowing that it was Shiro who was looking so miserable right now, not Lance. The facial expression was familiar, but the posture was wrong in subtle ways, reminding Keith that this wasn't Lance hovering nearby. Lance would draw Keith into a fight that would burn out some of this useless guilt. Lance would offer comfort to Hunk. He wouldn’t be standing mutely to one side.

Shiro fell into step next to him as he walked past without needing an invitation.

* * *

Training was always going to be a bit of a challenge for Shiro in his current state, but he was more than willing to give it a try if it might help clear his mind. He'd spent the walk between the hangers and the deck with Keith in silence, his mind spinning - turning over Hunk and Keith's discussion, his interaction with the Black Lion, and what he'd seen of Lance.

He'd meant to wait for Keith in the hallway outside the hanger and leave Hunk and him to their talk, not wait in the room with them. They were both adults after all, they didn't need a mediator to stand nearby to run damage control if things went downhill. And what exactly did he think he was going to do, break up a fight? Keith and Hunk getting into a punch-up with each other was a ridiculous idea, except he'd caught a few of the things Hunk's said and the resentment behind them. For a moment, Shiro thought that maybe his instinct was right, so much so that he'd almost rushed over when Hunk slapped Keith in the chest, expecting the movement to become a full bodied shove and ready to separate the pair. Except a fight didn't happen, and when Hunk stepped away he left Keith with something Shiro recognised immediately. Lance's letter. Shiro couldn't move, he could barely breathe as the memory of its contents lodged inside his throat. He stood paralysed as Keith read and tried to bite down on the irrational hurt that welled up inside him. Hunk was the one who got to decide who he showed Lance's letter, even if Lance specifically stated he didn't want Keith to know its contents. 

Pushing that thought aside, Shiro instead focused on the Black Lion echoing his own words back to him. He could admit they had weight, even if he wanted to argue that it wasn't the same at all. He hadn't recently been rescued from the Galra (as far as he knew), but he was newly rescued when he first encountered the Black Lion and they had no problem letting Shiro be their pilot then. Black listened to him and let him see through their eyes almost immediately, so why bring Shiro's possible mental state up now? Shiro could only see three possibilities: either the Black Lion couldn't help him find Lance, could help but didn't want him going after Lance and was using his own words to deter him, or it hadn't occurred to Black that any of them might not have been in their right mind before that exact moment anyway. Given Black's previous connection with Zarkon, so strong that Shiro had to beat it into submission before he had a chance to be the stronger bond, perhaps Black had no way of recognising when a potential pilot wasn't really in their right mind?

There were a lot of things that Shiro doubted about himself. He could admit that his time as a prisoner still haunted him, especially the parts his mind had blocked. Between the half-remembered tortures of being patched up between matches and the sickening numbness that came over him after the adrenaline faded in the arena, it would be more worrying if it didn't haunt him. He could admit that his mind felt like it was more hole than whole some days, while other days it felt like the holes just let more light flood into him until he wanted to laugh at the sheer wonder of still being alive, that each feeling made him doubt the validity of the other. But he didn't think, for even a second, that wanting to save Lance from disappearing meant he wasn't in his right mind.

Then there was Lance himself, and with him a slew of things Shiro was almost afraid to think about but still wanted to turn over in his mind until they made sense to him. There was the feeling of intense longing that he was sure he'd picked up through Black's senses, pronounced enough that Shiro could still feel the echo of it in his chest as if it were his own. Maybe it was his own, projected onto Lance's perfectly innocent desire to have the leader of Voltron back. He knew the emotion was there, but he couldn't say exactly what it's focus was and he couldn't shake off the hope that perhaps it was for him personally, as Shiro rather than as the Black Paladin or a lost friend. Then there was the emptiness in Lance's eyes contrasted with the light that Shiro didn't feel qualified to even name, but made him feel warm all the same. A nameless, formless thing that made his heart hurt even as it made him feel lighter. Shiro didn't know what it could be, and turning the feeling over in his mind didn't help him understand it any better. It felt too much like he was just projecting his own hopes onto Lance, and what did it mean that he thought about it so much? What did it mean that Shiro kept thinking about whether Lance felt this or that for him? What did he hope for? And really, what did any of that matter while Lance was still missing?

Training was a good plan. Keith was already warming up by shadow-boxing, movements quick and assured. Shiro didn't think he was ready for even something as simple as that yet. There were things that Lance's body reacted to as though they were completely normal that felt subtly wrong to Shiro's mind, leaving him suspended in a weird dissonant space where he was trying to take stock of everything and work out exactly where the discrepancy was. Lance wasn't as physically strong as Shiro was, he didn't adjust his movements to either lead with his right arm or compensate for the different weight, he didn't even hold his body the same way. Even knowing that, there were still things that were bound to catch Shiro completely off guard.

The irony of using differences between himself and Lance to try not to think about Lance wasn't lost on him.

He bounced on the spot, sure he wasn't imagining how much lighter Lance felt either. What would be the best way to get a handle on Lance's body while making sure he didn't do anything to overextend it during training, he wondered? Some basic yoga seemed like a good idea, so Shiro stood straight and exhaled while raising his hands above his head, launching into the Sun Salutation sequence. He leaned back on the inhale, straightened up, bent at the waist-

And very quickly came nose-to-knee with Lance's legs as he folded in half, forehead touching his shins. He froze, waiting for some sign from Lance's body to tell him exactly what he'd done wrong there, but nothing came. The back of his legs didn't burn like they'd been stretched too far or too fast, and his stomach wasn't aching in a way that would indicate Lance didn't have the core strength or flexibility to perform the action. Lance just seemed to be able to easily bend in half at the waist. Shiro could feel his face and neck heating up, and chose to blame it on blood rushing to his head due to his current position. He usually looked away when Lance was limbering up, focusing on his own breathing or warm-ups instead of watching the younger man bend and twist through flexibility exercises, so although he knew Lance was flexible he had no idea exactly how flexible. This pose wasn't even a stretch for Lance, and this was absolutely the worst thing for his mind to grab onto right now. He could never un-know that Lance could bend in half without any problems. Had he always been able to do that?

At least Shiro didn't have a mental picture to try to put on lockdown. This train of thought was already deeply uncomfortable.

"You okay there?" Pidge asked, startling Shiro enough to snap him out of his thoughts and nearly send him toppling over. Her head dropped into his periphery as she tilted her body sideways, allowing her to look at him from almost upside down.

Shiro turned his head to look past her, spotting Allura and Keith watching him with matching looks of bafflement. He hadn't even heard Pidge and Allura arrive.

"Yeah. Yes, I'm fine. I'm just a bit-" Shiro composed himself and swung his leg back to drop into a deep lunge. "I was just surprised, that's all. Lance is more limber than I am."

"The amazing-bendy-straw-boy is more flexible than the muscle-dorito?" Pidge said with friendly sarcasm, standing back upright. "What fresh new concept is this?"

"Very funny," Shiro responded flatly, pushing himself into a plank. This was nowhere near as easy as he remembered it being. "Lance being slim doesn't automatically equal flexibility. And I'm perfectly flexible myself, thank you," he added.

Pidge chuckled as he slowly sunk down into cobra and Keith gave him a small, lopsided smile. Unsurprisingly, Lance didn't seem to have the upper body strength to hold himself up in a plank as long as Shiro was used to, even accounting for his lighter body. The back-bending arch was no problem for him though.

Allura turned back to Keith, her expression dropping from amused back into concern. "Were you and Hunk able to... um, I believe the idiom Pidge used was something about applying lipstick?"

Pidge doubled over, hands across her stomach as her chuckling graduated to open laughter. Shiro snorted, trying to suppress his own laughter and move into a lunge on his opposite leg.

Keith spared Pidge a look before turning back to Allura. "I have a feeling that's not right. And no, not yet." Allura's face fell completely and Keith hurried to reassure her. "But we will be! Hunk just needs time to cool off."

"Kiss and make up," Pidge corrected, laughter dying down. "The expression is 'Kiss and make up'. I take it that I should also let Hunk cool down before making any attempts to talk to him?"

"I don't really know," Keith admitted, hands resting on his hips as he frowned into the middle distance thoughtfully. "It's probably best if you do though."

Pidge nodded and sighed, mood serious once more as she turned to Allura. "Okay. Then everyone we're going to get is here. Can you tell me what it was that you found in the archives last night now? You also mentioned something making sense to you in the Black Lion. Are they related?" she asked.

A grave look fell over the princess' face. "I'd prefer to do it with everyone present, but I suspect this will have to do for now," she said, turning to Shiro. "Just to confirm, you said that it seemed as though Lance became part of the Black Lion?"

Shiro jumped upright at suddenly being addressed, then nodded. "For a little while."

"And Keith, from the impression the Red Lion gave you, it seemed as though it would be easy for them to connect with Lance?" Allura asked, turning to Keith who nodded in reply. Allura acknowledged the action with a small nod of her own.

"There's a lot written about the bond between pilots and the Lions." She folded her hands in front of her, eyes going distant as she spoke. "The cohesion of the team is most important, but outside of that it's also important that each Lion is matched up to a pilot that complements them, to enable the Lion and pilot to work in sync with each other. When this bond is strongest, pilot and Lion move as one being as though the Lion themselves are an extension of the pilot, sharing senses and reacting as though they're one mind and body. Some people thought that there might be a step beyond even that, where there was no longer a distinction between pilot and Lion. They wouldn't move as though they were one mind and body, they _would be_ one mind and body. Some thought the way to do this was to have the strength of will and the ego to overwhelm the individuality of the Lion, fundamentally changing them." Her nose wrinkled in distaste before she continued. "Others suggested that the only way to achieve that was for the pilot to have _no_ will or ego, to allow the Lion's will to subsume them until they became one. Essentially, to allow themselves to become completely absorbed by the Lion.

"I didn't think anything of either idea until I found a report in the archive that spoke about that kind of complete connection from a different angle to anything else I'd read. It proposed that having that distinction between pilot and Lion, however small it might be, wasn't just a good thing. It was _necessary_ for Voltron to be truly effective. Pilots completely connected with their Lions could lose their minds within them, becoming nothing more than a part of them. Especially if their own personal quintessence was either adaptable enough to completely mirror the Lions or drained far enough that they begin to replace it from a Lion directly. As such, the author suggested that the Lions have safeguards in place to prevent anyone from connecting so strongly that they're completely lost."

Shiro couldn't help but think about how hollow Lance had looked through Black's senses, and Lance writing about the fields of stars inside the Black Lion and oceans inside of Blue. He imagined Lance thinking _'I'm so forgettable that even I forgot me'_ as he wrote. Could Lance's sense of self have been so worn down that he was vulnerable to becoming completely overwhelmed by Blue, or any other Lion? What if he _wanted_ to be absorbed into the Lion? More importantly, could Shiro ever pilot the Black Lion again now that he felt like they'd taken advantage of a moment of doubt and weakness in Lance?

Allura's gaze darted from Keith to Pidge, then back to Shiro. "One way of preventing that would be for the Lions to only allow individuals with a strong sense of themselves to become pilots. Most sapient species have either enough of a sense of self or strong enough mental defences to make it unlikely that a Lion could take them over completely. Alternatively, the Lions could have safeguards in place that triggered only if the will of the pilot was in danger of being completely absorbed by the Lion. Perhaps something like shutting down, for example.

"There's no indication that the proposal was ever confirmed or actioned," she hurried to add. "But either the Lion's were shutting down to protect themselves from something the Galra planted inside Lance and his increased ability to bond was deliberately cultivated to allow him to infect them in some way, or the lions were shutting down to protect Lance himself." Allura sighed. "To be honest, I couldn't help but think that the Lions were somehow afraid of what might happen to Lance."

"Huh." Pidge tapped at her chin. "So you think Lance might have been either modified in some way to be able to bond with any Lion, or that whatever was done to him stripped back his ego until there was nothing that might prevent him from being fully connected to a Lion?"

Allura looked at her carefully before taking a steadying breath. "Possibly. With that in mind, I would like all of you to work on your mental defences, as well as gaining more control over your connections to the Lions and each other. It would also be good if everyone could work on physical drills and solo combat simulations, since it's been several weeks since you've practiced those now. I know that this isn't a good situation for us to be in, but maintaining our skills is more important than ever while we're at least one paladin down. Loathe as I am to admit it, our duties do not stop just because one of our number is lost. So today we will have two vargas of combat drills, then two vargas of mental exercises after a break. I will be joining you for all training, and Hunk _will_ be joining us for the mental exercises."

Pidge raised her hand. "Actually, I was going to go do something useful once we'd compared notes, so, uh, permission to do that now?"

Allura glared. "This is useful, Pidge. Completely aside from our regular duties as paladins of Voltron, we have no guarantee that the data you have now will contain the information we need. Even if it does, we are likely to need to physically engage with the enemy at some point in getting Lance back, simply going by our previous history of gathering resources, technology or information. I want everyone to be ready for any eventuality. Is that understood?"

Shiro opened his mouth to protest and suggest that Pidge's focus really should be on finding Lance, but she spoke first. She narrowed her eyes, but refrained from returning Allura's glare in full. "You're sure this isn't just because the Black Lion ate another one of your paladins?" she asked.

Allura stepped back, eyes wide in shock, but Keith was the one to reply, stepping in front of Allura. "Pidge, it's only two hours to start with. Just deal with it for now, and continue with your research after."

"No. No, I will not 'deal with it'!" Pidge snapped, standing as tall as she could manage. "I want to know why I'm wasting time smacking around drones or sitting still thinking about walls when we should be looking for Lance!" She stepped towards Allura, chest puffed up with anger. "Right now we have no idea where our _friend_ is, and you want us to sit and meditate?! Because you think, what, we might connect so good with our Lions that we vanish?" She rounded on Keith. "And you're going along with it? You were fine with me going through the data looking for Shiro, but it's oh-so-different when Lance is the one missing!"

Keith's eyes widened before narrowing. "You know that's not true. I tried to get all of us back working together as soon as I took over leadership, remember? Or were you were too busy hurling abuse at everyone who came within ten meters of you!?"

"Days! You searched every inch of space for _days_ before you decided that it was time for us to all stop looking and play nice again! You can't even give Lance one fucking day?!" Pidge shouted.

"Both of you, knock it off!" Shiro shouted, stepping in and placing his hands on both of their chests. He hated the slight squeak in his voice as he spoke, but he couldn't stand to see two of his team arguing like this, going above and beyond anything he'd seen either Pidge or Keith engage in. They weren't just having a disagreement here, they were bringing up old arguments and old hurts, actively trying to draw blood. This was a well worn argument that had been brought back to be chewed over again with new information.

"I _never_ forgot and I _never_ stopped. I want to find Lance now just as badly as I wanted to find Shiro then!" Keith replied, completely ignoring Shiro. His voice was low and biting, spitting out each word like a bullet.

"Bullshit," Pidge snarled back. "You don't want to find Lance, because that might mean you have to give up Shiro!"

Keith recoiled as though slapped. Pidge seemed to realise she'd gone too far as soon as the words left her mouth.

"Shit. Shit, I'm sorry, I'm doing it again." Pidge slumped, hands rubbing at her nose. "Keith, I didn't mean that, I'm sorry, I was being an ass-"

"Stop," Keith whispered, hands clenched by his sides. He didn't look angry, Shiro noticed, he looked guilty. Shiro moved the hand that had been holding Pidge back over to Keith's shoulder, silently offering what comfort he could while he tried to work out what to say.

"No, a double ass at least. A huge ass, or some kind of perfect storm of flying asses," Pidge muttered, pulling her glasses off and continuing as though she hadn't heard Keith. "Fuck, I'm sorry, Keith," she finished louder.

"Language," Shiro snapped without thought.

Keith slumped over, shoulders shaking under Shiro's hands, and Shiro was sure that Keith was crying until he raised his head. Although tears were threatening, he wasn't crying yet. Instead, he was chuckling.

Pidge looked horrified. "Keith? Are you- well, not okay, but are you-"

"Sorry, just... winged asses," Keith tried to explain. "Raining down from the clouds. With little butt-wings. That's how you decided to apologise?"

Pidge gaped at him. "That's what you focused on? I'm apologising for being an absolute jerk, and you're critiquing my metaphors?" She returned her glasses to their usual place on her face and looked down awkwardly.

Keith looked away for a moment, guilt flickering across his face again, so fast that Shiro almost missed it. "Just tolerate the physical training." He turned to Allura, visibly pulling himself together and addressing the princess as the leader of the paladins instead of as Keith. "I think we should give everyone a little more time before we try any sort of group mental exercises. I don't think we're really ready to do that without Lance."

Allura looked between all of them, the distress visible in the tension of her body despite her trying to keep everything under control. "I understand. I don't like it, but I understand. I know that you're all defenders of the universe, and I need to trust that you can take care of yourselves. Just… please promise me that you _will_ work on your mental defences. Promise me that you will get back into your physical training as well. All I can do is try to prepare you for every eventuality that I can think of and hope that somehow that might be enough, just this once…" She trailed off, hands gripping the front of her dress tight enough that Shiro genuinely worried she'd tear it.

"Princess..." he took a step towards her, mind already on overdrive as he tried to think of something he could say that might alleviate the clear anxiety Allura held for the humans in her castle. "You're not at fault for any of this either."

Allura shook her head before Shiro could say any more. "Sorry. I trust you, and I know you're doing the right thing." She turned to Pidge. "Do this one thing for me, and I promise not to interrupt your search until it's obvious that you need a distraction in order to think clearly."

Pidge actually laughed at that. "When you put it like that, how can I refuse? I'm sorry, Allura. The ass thing applies here as well."

"I'm afraid I don't know exactly what an 'ass' is," Allura admitted.

"Well, an ass is a type of animal. It's got long ears and a reputation for being stubborn, as well as being really good at carrying things," Pidge explained, grinning with genuine warmth. "It's also a slang term for an idiot, and the general derrière region."

Allura chuckled, the sound a little watery but still strong. "A stubborn, long-eared idiot with a noteable behind? I'm afraid that almost sounds like the opposite of you, Pidge."

Pidge replied by blowing a raspberry, and the tension that had been humming through Keith's shoulders started to dissipate under Shiro's hand. The look of guilt didn't quite leave his face, but at least he no longer seemed to be preparing himself for a fight.

Shiro would take that for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a public holiday 'round here, so I'm gonna be kinda busy tomorrow. As such, I'm posting the chapter a little before Monday.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> Keith and Hunk had an emotional heart-to-heart, during which Hunk gave Keith the letter Lance wrote, allowing him to read Lance's thoughts and experiences in his own words. Although Hunk's still angry at the end of it, Keith at least had a greater understanding both of the Yellow Paladin and of Lance.
> 
> Shiro accompanied him to the training room, thinking upon everything that had happened since he woke up that morning. They were joined shortly by Pidge and Allura, the latter of whom filled them in on her own investigations into the Lions / Pilot relationship. Finally, Allura insisted that the team should train together...

Training took a lot more out of Shiro than he'd expected, leaving every muscle in Lance's body - from his shoulders and arms right down to his calves - aching in a way that told him they'd be stiff tomorrow if he didn't keep them mobile. Even his stomach muscles were aching from correcting his balance while dodging. His mind kept telling him he could do one thing but his body's automatic response was to do another. Shiro had never really thought about how much of what anyone did was conscious and how much was unconscious until his conscious mind was trying to adapt to a whole new set of unconscious behaviours. 

Allura called most of the shots, dictating what they did, when, and how often. Keith backed her up on almost every suggestion, only expanding on the exercises by suggesting various tactics and terrain modifications that would serve to make the scenarios more realistic. Shiro would have been impressed with how well they worked together if it weren't for the fact that he felt as though they were doing so to wear him down to the bone. 

Allura had set the program to randomly change the conditions of the field and who was working together against which opponents. Sometimes all four of them were fighting at once on their own, sometimes they were working in pairs, sometimes three of them needed to navigate to the fourth. The field shifted quickly as Allura called for the next scenario as soon as the current one had been beaten, so that everything was were always changing. They'd been training together, all four of them, for well over an hour when Keith called for a short break and approached the Princess. 

"Are you feeling okay?" he asked, clear concern in his tone despite his posture maintaining a level of professionalism that surprised Shiro. "It seems like you're going easy on us."

Shiro wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of that statement, but he was too busy trying to catch his breath, standing on the training deck with his fingers laced behind his head. There was no way Allura was going easy on them. Right? Shiro would have said that the Princess was working them a lot harder than he remembered her ever doing while he was in his own body. But Keith was serious, throwing doubt on even that small level of certainty.

"No," Pidge whined halfheartedly from her position on the floor where she was stretching out the back of her legs. "You're not supposed to mention that. Now she's going to make training harder."

Keith spared her an exaggeratedly unimpressed glance before returning his focus to Allura.

Allura pushed the few stray strands of hair that weren’t quite long enough to reach her bun out of her face. "My apologies. I'm afraid I rather neglected to return to sleep last night. As I have done most of my recent nights, even when my sleep did not need to be interrupted," she added, a touch of shame curling through her voice. "I just wanted to find something that might help me- no, sorry. There's no adequate excuse."

"That's not really what I meant," Keith grumbled. He hesitated a moment before placing a hand firmly on Allura's shoulder. "Perhaps you should take this chance to catch up on some sleep?" Allura looked as though she was about to protest, but Keith spoke before any real arguments could be formulated. "This is training. It's important, but having a well-rested and fully functional team is more important. You can't be ready to do your best if you're exhausted."

Allura chuckled under her breath. "You're right, of course." She looked over to Shiro, who could only shrug sheepishly at hearing the words he'd said often enough to Keith himself, repeated. "I'm clearly over-tired. I just- I keep thinking I hear..." She trailed off, shaking her head again. Keith tilted his head and regarded her curiously, trying to work out whether to ask for more details or not, but Allura spoke before he had the chance. "Perhaps rest is really what I need. Please, continue without me," she said.

"Sleep well, Princess," Shiro replied, nodding his understanding while Pidge gave Allura a thumbs-up beside him. 

Allura's eyes flickered over to him, that same strange look of confusion he'd noticed her directing at him lately falling across her expression again. She looked as though she'd forgotten that Shiro was in Lance's body, or that Lance wasn't here. With her next blink the confusion was gone. She executed a small, graceful bow before turning and leaving the training room.

Keith turned back to the pair of them, meeting Pidge's hopeful face. He stared her down for several long ticks before finally nodding his head, jaw set with determination. "Fine. Dismissed."

"Yes!" Pidge punched the air. "Thank you." She stood, stretching her arms over her head and looking between Keith and Shiro, trying to mask her discomfort with an exaggerated posture. "If you want, when you two are done, you can come find me in the bridge? I'll split up the stuff I got from the Moon-lantis lab that looked like it related to Lance and you can have a look over it and see if you find anything the computer couldn't pick out?" She dropped her arms and took the thumb of one hand in the other, twisting at the knuckle sheepishly. "I cross-referenced a bunch of the stuff I found with the data I grabbed from the Hyrito lab too, since I kind of had all of that already sorted and catalogued and..." She trailed off with a rueful shrug. "Plus, I've had nearly a dozen ideas for some search terms to run and some possible directions I could take over the past hour, so the help would be nice."

Shiro placed a hand on her shoulder, happy to take the peace offering in the spirit it was intended. "Of course. We'd both be happy to help you out." Besides, Shiro may even be able to spot something that the others wouldn't, perhaps triggering a spark of recognition in his lost memories that might otherwise be missed by everyone else.

"After we finish up here," Keith added. He ignored Shiro's raised eyebrow in response to that. Perhaps it didn't look the same on Lance's face?

"And on that note, I'm out." Pidge smirked at him; Shiro appreciated the effort no matter how shaky the result was. She picked up her laptop and its power dock and darted out of the training room as quickly as she could.

Keith watched her go with a small, fond smile before looking back to Shiro. Shiro's bemused expression was clear enough to prompt Keith to shrug. "I wasn't planning on insisting she train in the first place, but then she attacked Allura. It sounded like she could do with working some of that aggression out. You ready to keep going?"

"About that," Shiro said, turning back to fully face Keith. "I'm not sure I should train much longer, I'm still getting used to all of…" he waved his hand up and down in front of him to indicate his whole body, "this. I don't want to overwork myself."

Keith gave Shiro a small, confused pout that made Shiro want to ruffle his hair. "Lance usually doesn't complain about being tired or sore for another twenty minutes. And even then he could train for three and a half varga's before he couldn't do any more. Although that was before he-" his voice hitched, a small break that showed far more emotion than any of the careful words around it. "- before he was taken prisoner."

Shiro tried to keep his surprise from showing, but he didn't think he was succeeding, judging by the spark of mirth that lit up Keith's eyes. "Three?"

"And a half," Keith corrected him. "It's pretty easy to get him to push a little harder." One corner of his lips tugged back into something that could have been a pleased smirk if it weren't turned more self-deprecating by his need to be understood by Shiro. "All I have to do is challenge him. Insinuate that he can't do something, maybe add a few light insults, and he'll charge ahead. Both in training and on missions, as it turns out," he finished bitterly.

Something uncomfortable settled itself into Shiro's chest. It felt like it belonged there.

"I couldn't really inspire the team the way you could to begin with. It's not that they didn't respect me, I'm sure." Keith hurried to add, looking Shiro over once before his gaze slid off to the side awkwardly. "But I'm not you, I'm not-" he cut himself off with a single-shouldered shrug- "I tried to be as much like you as I could, but everyone knew I wasn't you. So I took some time to figure out what would motivate everyone else whenever they pushed back against my orders, beyond us all just doing our best for the team." He paused, eyes darting back up to Shiro's. 

It took Shiro a moment to find his voice. "It sounds like you worked it out, though?" His response came out more like a question than the statement of fact he'd meant it to, so he followed up with a more confident "you're working really well with Allura, just going by what I've seen today. And you seemed closer with Hunk." He stopped himself before going further. With this morning's argument still fresh, Shiro worried that mentioning Hunk's was more likely to cause Keith to shut down than to open up.

Keith studied Shiro's face, the silence settling around them again. He had no idea what he might look like to Keith right now and no idea how to control Lance's face to project the calm understanding or encouragement he wanted to. He hoped he didn't look as lost or small as he felt, at least.

"I guess so," Keith replied, stilted and self-conscious, as though so far out of his comfort zone he wasn't even sure he was using the correct words. "It took Allura a while to really get past that whole Galra resentment than she wanted to admit. Sometimes she overcompensated, especially in front of the others. But we talked a lot more. We had to." His right hand rose to rub unconsciously at his shoulder as he spoke, eyes darting back over to Shiro before slipping off again, as though he couldn't speak and look at Shiro at the same time.

Since Shiro looked like Lance, perhaps he couldn't. 

"Hunk worries a lot and overreacts, but he was the first one who was really willing to try for me," Keith said when Shiro didn't speak, quietly encouraging him to continue. "Grumbling the whole time sure, but he didn't argue as much as Lance would. He'd say that he couldn't do this or that at first, but if I still asked him to, he'd find a way." Slowly, the awkwardness dropped away as Keith continued to talk. "I don't know if he was pleased whenever he proved himself wrong, but I hope so. Pidge was kind of confusing. Sometimes she would try to do way too much on her own, but then she'd turn completely around and refuse to do anything unless I threatened to take something away from her. And as long as she could do what I asked her to, she wouldn't even get too angry afterwards." His smile turned softer, fondness bleeding through into his voice. "After the first week, it felt like Pidge only really smiled when she overcame those challenges. She was more energised, she had new ideas, she was just more like herself again. It felt... good, I guess, thinking that I could do something that made her smile, even if I had to be her enemy to do it."

Shiro nodded, unsure exactly what to say. What could he say? He'd wanted Keith to lead the team in his stead if something happened to him, but he hadn't considered that it might result in Keith trying to step away from his friends, antagonising or analysing them down in an effort to… what, be like Shiro?

He shouldn't have been surprised, but he still didn't like it.

"What does that face mean?" Keith asked, interrupting his thoughts.

"’That face?’" Shiro blinked at Keith in confusion.

Keith clicked his tongue against his teeth. "The expression you're wearing right now. Lance wore it all the time, but he always just said he was thinking about dinner or sleep or some alien babe." He looked away, eyes on the far wall rather than looking at Shiro. "So, what does it really mean?"

Shiro allowed himself a second to think before responding, both to gather his thoughts and to decide how honest he should be. "I'm mostly worried and sad that you felt like you had to be like me, even though I know it's too late to change that. I wanted you, _as you are_ , to be the leader. I never wanted you to feel that loneliness or to think you needed to distance yourself from your friends. Your family." He hesitated another second before continuing, "And I think I might deserve to feel that. Like I'm to blame, if not for disappearing than for putting all this on you without really telling you that."

Keith's eyes widened, his mouth falling softly into an 'oh' sound as he stayed focused on the wall. His eyes grew more glossy as tears filled them, threatening to spill over but never quite making it.

"Keith?" Shiro asked, reaching out to rest a hand on the younger man's arm, letting it hover a heartbeat before allowing it to fall. 

The touch was enough to shake Keith out of whatever revelation he'd just had, and he rubbed at his face. "Let's go for a little longer before we go and meet up with Pidge," He said, waiting only long enough for Shiro to nod in acknowledgement before moving back into a fighting stance.

* * *

The words swam and blurred before Shiro's eyes, running into each other until they were almost unreadable. He closed his eyes and pinched at the bridge of his nose, despite knowing it wouldn't really help. The problem wasn't that he was tired, although he was that as well. Continuing to train with Keith had left him feeling like Lance's hands had to be trembling with how over-exerted his arms felt, but every time he checked they remained completely steady, without even a tremor running through them. He wondered how much stamina Lance had lost from his ten days of forced inactivity if he felt this physically weak.

No, the current problem was that Shiro didn't understand half of what he was reading, and the effort of trying to make sense of it was giving him a headache. The half he did understand made his skin crawl, detailing with a cold precision the chemical and mechanical adjustments made to the containment module for 'Subject 14' - Lance's designation according to Pidge, raising the dark possibility in Shiro's mind that this had been done to 13 living creatures _before_ Lance. There was also the fact that his attention was drawn to any movement around him if his eyes wandered from the screen for even a moment, breaking his concentration. Focusing enough to break down the words in front of him was requiring a lot of willpower and mental processing, and after however long he'd been at this, he was starting to feel it. 

Using a trick that had helped him study back at the garrison, Shiro told himself he'd finish reading his current log extract before making any suggestion of a break, all the while ignoring the small but persistent feeling that someone should have suggested a rest by now. Who exactly should that person be? Coran, who had disappeared somewhere into the bowels of the castle ship some time this morning and not re-emerged since? Hunk, who was clearly still angry at Keith and Pidge? Allura, who was hopefully asleep? Pidge wasn't the sort, and Keith wouldn't call for a break first, no matter how much he might need one. It couldn't be Lance, because right now there was no Lance. Shiro was surprised by how much he missed Lance's antics right then. Judging by the hunch in Keith's shoulders, he could use the distraction to help his mind refocus, and Shiro could do with the mental break Lance and Hunk often provided, small distractions that changed the way he was looking at the words or changed the angle he approached a problem from. But there was no Lance, there was only Shiro wearing his form like an ill-fitting robe.

Pidge sat at her own station with her laptop to one side, running searches and pulling up possible sections for review as she read through the data herself on her main monitor. The frown on her face was in danger of becoming a permanent fixture as her frustration built. Shiro could hear her murmuring to herself as she searched, the sound welcome in the quiet of the room. In the station in front of her, Keith sat with headphones on, listening to audio logs and communications while scowling at the display as though it was personally responsible for Lance's disappearance and glaring at it would somehow help.

Shiro checked the console's clock and bit back a groan when he saw that he'd only been sat at the monitor for just over a varga. It felt so much longer, and now he was aware of his leg jiggling entirely without his say-so. Forcing himself still, he reread the last few sentences he remembered reading before resolutely finishing the paragraph detailing the adjustments made to Lance's containment module to prevent him from sleeping and thereby interrupting their 'extraction' process.

"Pidge, have you found anything about what exactly was being 'extracted' from Lance?" Shiro asked. Perhaps the extra information might help him make sense of this section so that he could let it go and move on to the next.

"From what I've put together, some kind of chemical or energy that these guys were specifically looking into." She typed a quick command into her console, and a graph appeared on Shiro's screen. "The nearest translation I can get is 'Psyessence', but I'm not sure if it's similar to Quintessence or if it's named that because it' some kind of concentrated thought extract. Either way, they were filtering it out of Lance's cerebrospinal fluid," she shuddered.

"Is that why I have those bandages on the back of my neck?" Shiro asked, rubbing absently at them. He'd noticed the waterproof bandaging when he'd been getting ready for bed yesterday, but although whatever they covered itched, they didn't really ache, so he'd not thought any more about them than he did the small bruises on Lance's body, chalking them up to minor training injuries.

"Yeah, you- uh, Lance had two ports installed back there." Pidge wrinkled her nose. "Some stuff leaked out when Keith cut them, and I now realise it was probably brain stuff. So I'm gonna stop thinking about that for now."

That was an unpleasant thought. Shiro decided to let them both out of the conversation by leaning in to study the graph instead. His eyes were barely taking in words any more, but the visuals of the graph seemed much easier to read. To one side was a helpful diagram of a human brain, lines leading off from separate areas into the graph that plotted out their activity each varga. Activity in some areas, especially towards the front and top, lowered rapidly over the first Quintent. Some fell over the first three Quintents before steadily rising towards a dotted line marked as the 'Eidolon Limit' and hovering on it with occasional spikes over. Only one area started low and steadily rose towards that dotted line, the line clearly correlated with a bright blue data set showing the amount of Psyessence extracted each varga.

Easy to read sure, and he could get the gist of what it was telling him, but it didn't really mean anything to him except to tell him that parts of Lance's brain had all but shut down while other parts had spiked into overdrive with the lack of input. After everything he knew and everything he'd read in the past varga, seeing Lance's thoughts and experiences from being in total isolation coldly laid out as a series of numbers and lines on a chart still hurt more than he expected it to. More than it probably should have, the anger and ache settling in his heart until he wasn't sure whether he wanted to hug or hurt someone more.

To Pidge's right, Keith pulled his headphones off with an aggravated growl, the movement startling Shiro but prompting him to breathe and center himself again. Keith ran his hand through his hair in frustration.

Pidge's shoulders slumped, but she still asked "Did you get anything?"

"No mention of Voltron or Paladins, even when they talk directly about the Hyrito mission and capturing Lance. I wouldn't even have known it was us they were talking about if I hadn't been there," Keith said with a frustrated huff. "Certainly nothing about the Lions or any kind of connectability. It's like they're directly avoiding mentioning exactly who was involved. I can confirm that they went after Lance specifically because they saw him shoot down that Robeast, but we already suspected that. I also now know that the person in charge of both the moon and Hyrito was a Doctor Aunwor, but I don't think they ever reported what they were doing here to Central Command, or even to any member of the Galra army."

"Aunwor?" Pidge hummed thoughtfully. "I've seen their name in a few places. If they're the one in charge and they're not reporting to anyone else in the empire, then maybe what they were doing is illegal or immoral, even by Galra standards."

"The Empire has a moral line?" Keith asked dryly. "Who knew."

Pidge responded with an unimpressed eyebrow raise. "What I mean is, there might not have been anyone to come back them up or help them get away from the planet. If Hunk hasn't found anything, we might still be able to track this Doctor down."

As though summoned by his name, the doors to the room hissed open, allowing Hunk to stride in followed closely by Coran. With barely a glance at anyone else in the room, Hunk moved to sit in the back left corner, his usual console behind all three of them.

For a heavy moment, all was silence. Shiro was acutely aware of Keith's sharp focus shifting over to Hunk, while Pidge reacted by gritting her teeth and redoubling her attention on the data. Shiro could barely breathe through the sudden weight in the room, his already tired and distracted mind scrambling desperately for the right thing to say or do that might alleviate some of the tension.

Nothing came to him.

Coran at least seemed oblivious to the mood, or more likely had read the mood and decided the best way to ease it was by chatting. He clapped his hands to draw the Paladin’s attention, the noise softened by his gloves. "Alright. I've confirmed that every one of the healing pods are accounted for, although we are missing a few stasis pods," he said, his bright voice jarring against the taut silence. "One of which I can at least confirm was jettisoned into space _before_ Lance went missing the first time."

Shiro felt himself flinch guiltily despite his attempts to control his reaction.

"And… well, with everyone but Allura in this room, I feel there is one more thing I need to say," Coran continued, walking to the front of the room. He turned smartly on his heel to face the group, all eyes focused on him. Without any further preamble, he bowed low enough that Shiro worried for a moment that he'd damage something. "I must apologise most sincerely, for failing in my duty of care to you and to Lance in particular."

"Huh?" Hunk was the first to react, sparing Shiro from having to say anything constructive in response to Coran's unexpected apology. "No, it's... I mean, I'm sure you did your best, Coran."

Coran turned his head to the side and stroked his mustache absently, his profile revealing little of his inner thoughts. "I knew Lance had been struggling, I knew how poorly he was coping. When he needed me to be there for him, all I could offer him as encouragement or support was Voltron. I see now that it was the wrong thing to say." He turned back to the group, "I can only apologise and offer the full scope of my know-how to your own investigations. Whatever it is you need, whatever you think will help, you need only let me know and Detective Coran will be on the case."

"Detective?" Pidge asked under her breath.

A nod of understanding was the only reply Shiro could think of. Coran returned his nod and moved to Pidge and Hunk, placing himself directly between the two, determined to act as a sounding board for them to bounce ideas off of and to subtly provide an interface between the two. Shiro glanced back further to Hunk, watching the surprise and distress dancing across his features without any attempt at concealment before his expression hardened into determination and his eyes dropped down to the blueprints already displayed on his monitor. Hunk wore his every emotion plainly and openly, and Shiro realised that he'd never appreciated how easy it made knowing what he was thinking until this moment. 

With a small exhale, Shiro turned back to his console and tried to refocus. The small break allowed him to work through the last few logs Pidge had set aside for him and highlight the few scraps he thought could possibly be relevant to Lance's latest disappearance.

To his right, Keith fidgeted in his seat, looking between Coran and Hunk as though he wanted to say something before shaking his head and trying to focus back on the screen before him, going over the last of the details Pidge had sent to him and leaving his headphones to one side. Shiro could tell that he was listening intently to every word that Coran and Pidge said, no matter how subdued, instead of taking in anything on his screen. Especially as Hunk put in his own opinion about the blueprints that Pidge had sent him, still cold and painfully professional towards her but drawn into the conversation by Coran's exuberance and broad statements that Hunk could not resist correcting or supporting.

When Pidge raised the possibility of tracking down this Doctor Aunwor, Hunk jumped in immediately, the conversation quickly leaving Shiro behind. Neither himself nor Keith were helping here.

"Keith," Shiro called, startling Keith enough to have him flinch before he pulled his gaze away from Hunk and back to Shiro. "Let's take a short break?" He'd meant that to sound like a command, but through Lance's voice it sounded uncomfortably like a question.

Keith looked back to Hunk, now leaning over his own console to point at things on Pidge's screen, before he nodded.

* * *

Stars spread out in every direction around Shiro, a dizzying sky-scape of lights and cosmic dust. Every colour of light imaginable studded the velvet black between scatterings of brown and silver particle clouds. Space was less colourful than the pictures he'd seen as a child, true, but the real thing had the advantage of being real and being unimaginably huge. 

He breathed in, chest filling with that familiar awe that had originally driven him to enlist to become a pilot, had him agreeing to fly to the most remote place in the solar system anyone had ever flown. He'd wanted to see what the stars looked like without the atmosphere of Earth between him and them, but he hadn't been prepared for how profound the feeling had been, how vast the universe felt while he, conversely, felt like he was closer to all of it. They shone so brightly, without the twinkling they had on Earth, that they looked close enough to touch. It was easy to imagine he could pluck one of the lights from the sky and hold it in his hand.

A blue one, Shiro thought as he reached a hand out towards the stars. He wanted a blue one.

Electricity ran across Shiro's skin, biting his nerves just as his fingertips brushed against something warm and tangible. A blinding flash of light and noise accompanied the bolt of energy and Shiro cried out and flinched back, eyes screwed shut against the pain. Of course. Reaching for the stars had caused him pain, stripped him of his identity and drawn him into a war against an empire older than any human civilisation. Space had both kinds of awe; the awe _some_ and the awe _ful_.

Cool hands smoothed over Shiro's head and neck, the soothing touch chasing away the lingering sting of the electricity. Shiro froze and the hands stilled a moment before running over his hair gently. He couldn't hear anything over the ringing in his ears and his eyes were still watering too much to open, but he forced himself to breathe out slowly and focus, noting every tiny detail he could feel and letting them draw him out of the darkness that threatened to drag him under. 

Long, slender fingers ran through his hair, trailing down behind his ears to rest on the back of his neck, and Shiro had to resist pushing himself into them. Hadn't he been alone just a moment ago? He was among the stars, but… wait, what was he doing before the stars? Shiro thought back to the last thing he remembered before that, but the memories were thin and misty, slipping away as he tried to focus on them. He'd gone to take a break with Keith, hadn't he? They'd gotten a drink and headed to one of the lounges. Then what? 

Had Shiro fallen asleep on one of the couches? If so, then the stars, the electricity, even the ringing that was slowly fading from his hearing, were just a dream. As soon as the thought came to him, Shiro felt ridiculous for not realising sooner. Of course it was a dream, he was in the void of space and he'd tried to catch a star. 

If this was a dream, then the person touching him had probably heard him make a noise when the star had shocked him and was trying to soothe him. Keith was the most likely person, since he'd been with Shiro when he must have fallen asleep. 

The hands drifted down his neck and across his shoulders, one remaining on his right shoulder while the other moved to rest against his forehead, and Shiro's mind registered smooth, soft skin. Keith's hands were many things, but soft wasn't one of them. He had calluses across his fingers, both from handling weapons and from fixing things when he lived alone, and he wore gloves to protect most of his hands from that kind of wear. These hands weren't wearing gloves, so it wasn't Hunk or Coran either, and they were too large to be Pidge's. Allura then, she had soft hands and long fingers, she was compassionate and kind enough to try to sooth him if he actively appeared distressed. 

But Allura was supposed to be asleep, right?

The ringing in Shiro's ears had dimmed enough for him to notice a thrumming beat, like dripping water falling onto a taught drum skin. Had he knocked his drink over? He'd moved around a lot last night, so perhaps Lance was just more prone to thrashing about. Wait, was Shiro petting himself right now? He hoped not, that'd be awkward to explain when he woke up. He tried to raise his hands and place them over the touch across his skin, only for his own hands to fall through the sensation and fall into place where those hands had been. He ran his – Lance's – hands up his neck, comparing the sensation until there was no doubt in his mind.

Those were Lance's hands. 

"You shouldn't be here again." The words curled into his ear with a puff of warm air, the voice unmistakably Lance.

Shiro gasped, eyes flying open with surprise. Sparks of gold light danced across his vision, but Lance's form, sketchy and indistinct, was traced out as an after-image in front of him. "Lance?" he asked breathlessly. "Is that you?"

The figure flickered like a guttering candle before solidifying into Lance, an aurora of colour lighting the edges of him to stand out against the starscape. It may have been a trick of the light, but the smirk Lance gave him struck Shiro as being brittle and hollow, not quite reaching his eyes. "What would you do if I said it wasn't?" he asked, cockiness pulling one corner of his mouth up into a lopsided grin that was unmistakably _Lance_. "I mean, I can't exactly tell you something that only I would know. You know what I know already, and if I tell you something that I know that you don't know, how are you even supposed to know if I'm telling the truth?" Lance squinted, brows knitting and eyes going unfocused with intense thought. "I guess I could tell you something only Hunk would know, but that's not going to help you until you get back, so it's kind of not useful right now."

When it was put like that, Shiro had to believe that this was the real Lance for now. He certainly looked and acted like Lance might, although there was an underlying hollowness and sadness that Shiro didn't remember. 

He reached out to touch Lance's shoulder, half expecting his hand to pass right through him, only to feel solid flesh. "It really is you," he whispered, the question getting lost somewhere between his thoughts and his voice. His dreams wouldn't recreate Lance so perfectly without some ulterior motive, but Shiro felt completely lucid and in control, as though he wasn't really dreaming. "How? Where are you? What did you do?"

Hurt flashed across Lance's features before he schooled his expression back to a small smile that still felt sincere despite the effort put into it. "Isn't that obvious? I found you and I bought you back," he replied, as though it were really that simple. As though that was all there was to that. "You're welcome, by the way."

"No, that's not-" Shiro cut himself off with a short huff. "Thank you for finding me," he tried instead. Lance looked genuinely surprised, causing the sharp bite of guilt to settle against Shiro's stomach. "But more importantly, where are you?"

Lance closed his eyes, the outline of his eyelashes casting an aurora across the dark starscape of his skin, and shrugged. "A lot of places. At the moment, I think I'm somewhere that the Lions only have access to when Voltron is formed." His eyes opened to focus on Shiro with care and concern that he wasn't sure he deserved. "At least, that's where I found you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm finally back! Yay! 
> 
> With a chapter which is kind of an intermediate chapter that gives people some background info with only a few meaty character interactions! Boo.
> 
> I could tell the story of exactly why this chapter took so long, but rather than making excuses, I'll do my best to work faster in the future.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> Allura and Pidge leave training early - Allura to sleep, Pidge to get a leg-up on scouring through the data from the moon lab. Shiro and Keith havea brief heart-to-heart once they're alone before joining Pidge in her research - once they've practiced enough for Keith to be satisfied.
> 
> After making his way through all the logs that Pidge set asside for him (with some difficulty on Shiro's part), Hunk re-emerged with Coran. Coran tookit upon himself to ease the tensions in the group, firstly by apologising and then by acting as a go-between for Pidge and Hunk. Keith and Shiro take the oportunity for a break, during which Shiro falls asleep.
> 
> In his dreams, he finds himself in a dark field of stars...

Sometime between commenting on the log files he'd been reading and Keith working out how to bring up Coran's apology, Shiro had fallen asleep. The fact that today's practice had worn him out was concerning, since Shiro would normally have been able to keep up with Keith without any problems and Lance had previously been able to manage the pace Keith set just fine as well. Coran did mention some weight loss, but Keith distinctly remembered him saying Lance was physically healthy. Unless that weight loss was all muscle, he had to assume that a lack of sleep was to blame for Shiro's exhaustion, a late night arrival followed by trying to sleep in a strange room and a strange body. Shiro had even slept in that morning, Keith couldn't remember the last time that happened. 

He should probably wake Shiro, since he'd told Keith explicitly that he didn't like sleeping outside of his own room, but Keith just didn't have the heart. Instead, he took the moment to study the sleeping Shiro-in-Lance's-body. Without Shiro's speech patterns or movements, there was no way to tell that it was really Shiro on the couch looking like Lance, not Lance himself. Lance's particular sleeping style definitely showed in the way his hands twitched where they'd fallen haphazardly; Lance was an active sleeper, tending to jerk suddenly and mumble in his sleep, while Shiro was a heavy, still sleeper last Keith knew. Admittedly, it had been a long time since Keith had seen Shiro sleeping. 

The faintest sound of cloth rustling accompanied by the light pat of footsteps in the hall caught Keith's attention, drawing it towards the doorway just in time to see something that looked suspiciously like the ends of white hair and a night-dress drift past. There was only one person they could belong to, no-one else in the castle had that much hair, let alone white hair. Still, Allura had only gone to bed a few varga's ago and shouldn't be awake yet. Alteans didn't seem to need as much sleep, but they still needed more than that.

Keith slid off the couch and stepped past the sleeping form of Shiro-not-Lance, making his way to the door and peering into the hallway. Sure enough, there was Allura, still dressed for sleep and walking away from him. "Allura?" he called. 

There was no answer, not even a twitch of recognition as she stepped around a corner. Was she completely ignoring him, or had she just not heard?

Apprehension settled into Keith's stomach as he stepped out into the hall to follow her, jogging to catch up. "Allura, you shouldn't be up," he said, less because he was expecting a reaction and more to announce his presence, in case she truely hadn't heard him.

Again, there was no reaction from Allura. Keith moved around to stand in front of her, but Allura looked through him, no recognition in her unfocused eyes. She didn't even slow until Keith braced his hands on her shoulders to stop her, throwing his weight behind the action. Allura blinked lazily at him, but stopped walking when her steps no longer carried her forwards. She looked like she was still asleep.

A suspicion starting to grow in his mind, Keith waved a hand in front of Allura's face. Her eyes sluggishly tried to focus on the movement, never quite making it in time. That confirmed it, at least; she didn't just look like she was asleep, she _was_ asleep. She was sleepwalking and he had no idea what to do with that. Were you supposed to wake up sleepwalkers or not? He'd never thought that would come up, so of course he couldn't remember. Even if he did remember which you were supposed to do, would it even be the same for Alteans?

Before he was aware that he'd made a decision, Keith had stepped to the side to let Allura pass. Even if he didn't wake her up, if he followed her he'd be able to keep an eye on her and make sure she didn't fall down the stairs or activate something she shouldn't. With that thought in mind, he fell into step behind her.

* * *

"Where you found me?" Shiro asked Lance, feeling lost. He looked around at the starscape around him, and though he could hear that steady thrum of a water-drum being struck regularly and feel a warm wind blowing over him, it wasn't enough to make this place feel like it was anything he hadn't seen before. "It’s just stars, like what I see when I'm inside the Black Lion," he said, although as soon as he spoke it occurred to him that the fact that he was seeing stars at all was a little odd, since he wasn't inside Black. Now that he was looking closer he noticed that the burning stars and clouds of glittering stardust were twisting and spinning through space as though caught in unnatural tornadoes of solar wind, changing the skies around him gently, but persistently. It was dizzying and disorienting if he tried to focus on it.

"We might not be seeing the same thing," Lance replied with a shrug. "For me, there aren't just stars. There's water beneath us, and trees beneath that. There's fire, dust, lightning, teeth-" He paused, scowling into the distance. "What is it with the facial hair and the teeth?" Lance shook his head, "anyway, I followed the lightning through the storm. Black only kind of knew the direction you'd gone in, but I could see bubbles you'd left behind. I could feel your presence." A flicker of distress drew his brows together before he deliberately smoothed his expression into rueful grin. "I had an idea where to go, I just needed a teeny bit of help getting there."

"...Ah," was the only response Shiro could think of that didn't involve telling Lance that he was making absolutely no sense. He shook the thought out, setting everything Lance had told him aside. There were more important questions he needed to ask, but what should he start with? So many crowded his mind, vying for the right to be the first out of his mouth. He started with what seemed like the most important question first. "What happened? Why am I in your body?"

Lance actually laughed at that, the sound echoing around them as though they were inside a deep cave. "Yeah, funny thing." He ran a hand over the back of his neck nervously. "I could find you, but your body wasn't here. So I had to improvise."

"By giving me yours?!" Shiro shouted back, incredulous. His voice sounded like a strange mix of his own and Lance's, veering more towards Lance as it went higher in both volume and pitch. Shiro gathered himself, taking a slow breath to drag it back under his control.

"Okay, I know it's not as buff or strong as your actual body and I don't think I can put on muscle mass like you could," Lance said defensively, "but it's a good body! Y'know, in good working order, only had one owner, never had a complaint before. It's only missing an appendix and some wisdom teeth and I've got twenty-twelve vision. Which I'm assured is actually good despite the number being lower than twenty-twenty."

"That's not what I'm getting at," Shiro stressed, clasping Lance by his shoulders and resisting the urge to physically shake him. He noted distantly that his arms looked like his own again, his usual prosthetic stark against Lance's space-darkened skin, each line highlighted with a light that shifted between violet and royal blue. He didn't give it any more focus than that; Lance was more important at the moment. "Ignoring any questions about how you managed it-"

"That's probably for the best," Lance interrupted.

"-for now, you shouldn't have rescued me if it meant that you weren't coming back too," Shiro drew in a rasping breath, trying to swallow the growing lump in his throat. "I'm sure there was another way. You could have told the team and between everyone I know you could have figured out-"

"Everyone already thought I was losing it!" Lance snapped, closing his hands around Shiro's wrists. Thankfully, Lance was more inclined to hold onto him rather than remove Shiro's touch and get away. "Heck, _I_ thought I was losing it! I wasn't even sure I knew what I was doing, or that I'd really seen what I thought I had. You think they would have believed me? Nobody even believed me before the Nothing!"

"Even then, I know you could have found a way. I didn't even know I was gone, I would have been fine a little longer," Shiro shouted to give his breath enough force to get out past the constricted feeling in his throat that was starting to choke him. He had to remind himself that he didn't want to get into an argument with Lance, he just wanted to work out what had happened and how to undo it. Blame wouldn't help and yet he needed to make sure Lance understood. "I'm not more important than you are, no one wanted us to swap places."

Lance stared at him wide-eyed, and for a brilliant moment Shiro thought he'd gotten through to him. Then Lance burst into laughter and Shiro's heart dropped down into his stomach.

"Are you kidding me?" Lance gasped. "You're going to seriously try that 'we are equals' thing now all of a sudden? Dude, the only skill I bring is being the team sharpshooter, which you'll notice is something Voltron rarely seems to need. The rest of the time I'm an attractive spare at best, team annoyance at worst. But you... you're a leader, a great fighter, an amazing pilot, strong in at least three different ways, kind… you're just _Shiro_. Everyone missed you so much-"

"Everyone misses you too," Shiro interjected, giving in to the urge and shaking Lance, just a little, for good measure. "Right now, everyone's going crazy trying to work out what happened to you, where you went, and how to get you back. You're-" His breath hitched, the thickness in his throat taking on a decidedly acrid taste. "You're wanted, Lance. And you never had to be a paladin of Voltron for that."

There was a flash of surprise on Lance's face, chased sharply by a look of dismay before he closed his eyes, deliberately hiding anything further from Shiro. "Stop it," he whimpered, shaking his head. His eyes fluttered open, fixing Shiro with a pained but fond smile, thumbs rubbing circles onto Shiro's wrist in a way that felt far too intimate. He drew in a shaky breath. "I get it. I know why you're saying this stuff all of a sudden and it's okay. You don't have to feel bad about anything, none of this is your fault. It's all on me, so no blame for you," Lance finished, emphasising his point by poking Shiro in his sternum before letting his hands fall loose at his sides. "Or anyone else. I know how disappointed and guilty the rest of the team felt before, how angry they were that I'd gotten myself captured like an idiot-"

"No," Shiro cut him off, but no other words seemed to be willing to follow that. He wanted to say that nothing he said was because of guilt, but it felt too much like a lie and the fact that Lance didn't seem to believe him made him want to only speak the truth. He knew intellectually that not everything could be his fault, there were things he just didn't have power over no matter how much he thought he should or wished he did, if only to give him some feeling of control. His rational mind and what he believed in his heart didn't always agree. "That isn't all it is," he said instead, buying himself a few more seconds to find the right words.

"The point is, I _wanted_ to get you out of this place," Lance said, waving to the galaxies around him. "I did this knowing I might not get to go back with you, because you…" he trailed off.

Shiro found himself too busy watching starlight track down his cheeks to even think about interrupting. He wanted to reach up and wipe the glittering bead off with his thumb, but that would definitely be too familiar, so he settled for letting his hands slide further down Lance's arms to rest above his elbows. The touch felt more intimate the closer they got to holding hands.

"You deserve to be saved, Shiro." Lance said, something uncharacteristically soft and warm filling his voice. "You didn't deserve to be trapped here, especially not because of Zarkon. Not after everything else he's done."

"You deserve to be saved too," Shiro said. "And I'm not saying that just because of guilt. I'm telling the truth. I've only told the truth." He took a beat to steel himself before plunging on, pulling up the words he'd strung together like prayer beads and repeated to himself enough to know by heart. "What happened to you doesn't mean you deserve to suffer now, and it doesn't change who you are. It doesn't make you less anything. It wasn't your fault. You don't deserve whatever _this_ is."

"I deserve this. I deserve to be in the darkness," Lance replied flatly, as though reciting a learned response.

Shock ran cold down Shiro's back, the feeling mirrored in Lance's eyes as they widened when he realised what he'd said. He stepped back quickly and turned his head away, arms crossing over himself defensively, leaving Shiro's hands sliding uselessly away from Lance before he thought to take a better hold.

"You're wrong." Shiro heard himself say, his voice barely sounding like his own and coming from somewhere outside of his control. "Whoever made you think that is wrong."

Lance met his eyes, and for a moment he couldn't breathe. He had no idea how to interpret the look Lance was giving him, some alchemical mix of fear, disbelief, dread and, unless he was letting himself see what he wanted to see, hope.

The moment passed too soon, and Lance stepped back again, retreating even further out of Shiro's reach as his expression fell into something false and suggestive. "Hey, have you given my body a full test drive yet?" he asked with an eyebrow wiggle.

* * *

It was times like this that Keith was reminded he lacked patience, often in a voice that sounded suspiciously like Shiro. His plan to follow Allura was going well, in that he was still following her, but she was walking so slowly that Keith wanted to wake her up anyway and be done with it.

As though hearing the silent plea of her impatient stalker, Allura picked up the pace, turning quickly at the next corner and taking the following staircase two steps at a time, nimble and graceful even asleep. Keith strode after her, speeding up to a jog to keep up with the princess by the time they reached the top of the stairs. Where exactly were they headed? This area wasn't very familiar to Keith, being closer to the Blue Lion's quarter of the castle than he usually ventured.

Was Allura heading to the Blue Lion?

Terrifying visions of Allura taking the Blue Lion out in her sleep filled Keith's mind. What if the princess woke up to find herself far from the castle and lost somewhere in space with no idea how she'd gotten there? Screw not waking up a sleepwalker- even if there were only a small chance that Allura could pilot the Blue Lion out of the castle, there was no way Keith could let her get that far. Something in his mind told him that he had to do something, _anything_ , to prevent her from getting inside the Blue Lion while asleep, and Keith wasn't sure whether it was the influence of the Red Lion, the Black Lion, or his own fear of losing someone else that he was hearing. All he registered was the urgency.

He sped up again to catch her, the hard thump of his boots against the floor drowning out the softer tap of Allura's own feet as she began moving faster, building from a jog to a run towards the hanger, as though a call to action were sounding throughout the hallways. She rounded the last corner before the final doorway that separated her from the Blue Lion's hanger, stride lengthening into an open sprint by the time Keith got close enough to even touch the back of her night-dress. Allura was faster than he was and if he didn't act now, she would pull away from him and he'd have no way to catch her.

He'd already tackled Allura to the ground before his mind fully registered fact. Together they toppled to the ground, Allura collapsing easily under the force of the impact despite Keith knowing she was more than capable of withstanding it while awake. She struggled forwards, completely ignoring Keith's sudden weight as she tried to move herself using only her arms until Keith managed to wrestle her onto her back.

"Allura!" Keith shouted in her face, shaking her back into the floor. "Wake up!"

Allura blinked sluggishly at him, but showed no other signs of waking. Her lips moved, the sound coming out as a low murmur that Keith had to bow lower to hear. "She's... calling me."

"Huh?" Keith asked, dropping lower again until his ear was almost pressed against Allura's mouth, but nothing more she said sounded like whole words. He tried to prompt her instead. "She? Do you mean the Blue Lion?"

Allura gripped his upper arms suddenly, causing Keith to instinctively flinch back as her hands squeezed hard enough that he knew he'd have bruises. "He's close."

"What? Who are you talking about?" Keith struggled in her hold, but Allura only responded by clasping him tighter, pulling an involuntary pained yelp out of him. "Allura, you're hurting me," he hissed. He tried to pull back, but Allura's grip held and Keith realised with a sudden flush of panic that he couldn't feel his arms below her hands.

The princess muttered something else, but the only words Keith managed to catch over the sound of his blood rushing through his ears were "feel him here."

"Allura, snap out of it!" Keith shouted, tugging desperately and trying to make his hands listen to him. He managed to gain enough control over one to slap pathetically at her face.

Allura blinked faster in response, confusion pulling her eyebrows down into a delicate pout. It seemed as though she might be waking up. Her hold on Keith loosened just enough for the feeling of pins and needles to flare up under her fingers and Keith pressed his advantage, attempting to move his other hand to tap at her again before slapping a hand completely over her face. She made a confused sound and the vice-like hold she had on Keith's arms relaxed enough for him to feel like he had some control over his arms again, complete with the horrible tingling of feeling returning to his limbs.

He tapped her again on each cheek for good measure, not quite willing to go so far as to slap her. "Wake up!"

Allura looked up in sluggish bewilderment. "Keith? What-" She turned her head to take in her surroundings. "Where am I?"

Keith sighed in relief, sitting back up and deliberately making no move to cradle his sore arms. "You're in a hall near the Blue Lion's hanger. You were sleepwalking."

It took a second for Allura to take his words in, and as soon as she did her face crumpled into a picture of exhaustion. "No, I would have sworn I locked my door," she grumbled under her breath before returning her focus to Keith. "And I take it there's a reason you're sitting on top of me?"

Keith looked down to where he was firmly planted across Allura's stomach. "I thought you were heading towards the Blue Lion to pilot them?" Keith tried to explain, the answer that sounded perfectly reasonable in his head coming out as a question entirely without his say-so. "You were running, so I had to tackle you to make you stop."

"Ah." Allura responded. "Well, as you can see, I'm quite awake now. So if you could get off of me?"

Keith moved to do just that before a thought struck him. "Wait. You were sleep-talking before I woke you up. Do you remember what you were dreaming?"

"What I was dreaming?" Allura repeated, perplexed. Keith didn't respond, letting her take the time she needed to gather her thoughts. "I thought- I guess I dreamed- that I heard the Blue Lion's voice telling me that someone was nearby. It sounded a little like Lance, like he was just in the next room. I felt like I'd find him if I got up and wandered through the door."

Keith's projected seriousness immediately softened into sympathy. He couldn't say that Lance and Allura were friends exactly, what with his constant flirting and her clear and precise disinterest, but there was still some understanding between them, a kind of relationship that seemed almost like siblings or cousins. One that Keith realised Allura might have come to expect as part of her new normal since waking up. Even Keith had worked out that Lance flirted because he wanted the attention and liked the idea of love more than anything else, so Allura must have seen that.

How would Allura have reacted if Keith had gone missing? As much as it made him uncomfortable to think it, Allura would probably react to his disappearance the way she'd reacted to Shiro's disappearance - with distress at losing a confidant and someone she could rely on, but with determination to carry on the fight against the Galran Empire. Not like this, with dreams of his voice invading her sleep. Keith wasn't sure he even wanted that.

Allura cleared her throat. "Do you plan to get off of me any time soon?"

Keith looked down at where he was sitting across Allura's lower stomach, having forgotten for a moment exactly where he was. "Oh, right. Sure," he said, standing quickly and offering the princess a hand up. She accepted, smoothly rising to her feet. If Keith's grip was still a little weak, Allura had the grace not to mention it.

For a moment they stood in silent solidarity, hands clasped between them.

"I'm afraid I don't think I could sleep any more right now," Allura said wearily.

Keith huffed out a small laugh before nodding. "You sure? You look like you need it. Just lock your door next time you try."

The chime of Allura's laughter, no matter how tired, made Keith feel like he'd managed to say exactly the right thing.

* * *

"Huh?" Shiro asked, completely thrown by the sudden change of topic. He narrowed his eyes, about to accuse Lance of changing the subject when the blue paladin elaborated by moving a loosely closed fist up and down rapidly in front of him in a distinctive gesture. Shiro choked on his accusations before they made it out of his mouth. "No! Of course not!"

"What do you mean 'of course not'?" Lance asked with mock offence. "I know you haven't had it long, but you make it sound like you'd never want to try."

"I wouldn't do that!" Shiro insisted, feeling his ears and cheeks heating up. There was absolutely no way he could be having this conversation right now.

Hurt swept over Lance's face, effectively cooling Shiro's own embarrassment. In the blink of an eye, Lance's expression shifted again to one of deliberate exaggerated indignation. "Why not? I gave it to you, it'd be a shame not to enjoy it."

"Why? Because- because it's not mine!" Shiro tried to explain, stumbling over his word choice. How was he supposed to argue his point here? "You didn't tell me I was allowed to do anything, I'm not going to go grope a body that isn't mine without permission! Besides, It's your body, not mine. You still have say over it, even if you're not currently _in_ it."

Lance's eyes widened again before his face fell back into a deliberate wry smile. "It's kind of yours though," he said, looking away to focus on a distant star. "It's not like you stole it or anything. But if it makes you feel better, you have my permission to treat it like it was yours." He stepped back further, turning his body completely away from Shiro for the first time this conversation. A small chuckle threaded through the space between them. "It could have been yours before you disappeared, if you wanted," he mumbled to himself. Shiro was sure he wasn't supposed to hear that, but Lance's voice was unnaturally clear, as though he were speaking directly into Shiro's ear instead of several meters away. "But you wouldn't have accepted even if I threw myself at you, would you? Why exactly would you accept just because I threw you _into_ it?"

"Lance!" Shiro darted forwards to catch him before he moved too far away, but his hand passed through Lance's body as though it were made of water, the surface rippling as he pulled his hands back. "Wait, don't go - how can we find you? How do I get you back?"

Lance bit at his lip as he faded into the background, the outline of his features the only thing that delineated him from the stars behind him. "Don't go looking for your body right now."

Shiro sucked in a surprised breath. "You know where I am," he said. No question, only a statement of fact.

Lance was gone before he got an answer, leaving Shiro standing alone amongst the stars. 

He sighed and ran a frustrated hand through his hair before dragging it down his face, covering his eyes to block out the spinning stars around him. That could probably have gone better. Maybe if he'd held on tighter, or even pulled Lance into a hug so he couldn't get away. Maybe if he hadn't let Lance distract him. Maybe, maybe, or maybe...

When Shiro next opened his eyes, it was to a stark blue-grey ceiling. His mind hadn't caught up to that change before the pain caused by the bright overhead lights dragged him completely to consciousness and out of the dreamscape he'd just been in. No, that wasn't right, because he hadn't been dreaming. Had he?

Disorientation swept over him as he tried to reconcile the sudden change. Images of tall, robed and masked figures hovered above him with blades and wires before they flickered to become human figures with medical scrubs and syringes, then back again. Panic sparked his nerves, driving his pulse to quicken and breathing to race, but he screwed his eyes shut against the ache of the lights and the memories, murmuring some feeble protest and throwing a hand over his face. Soft, warm, nothing metalic about it. He blinked a few times, waiting for his eyes to properly adjust before he raised his hand above him to confirm. Lance's hand, of course, not his own prosthetic made from alien materials, or even the caloursed, battle-scarred skin of his left hand.

"I was about to wake you up."

Shiro sat up at the sound of Keith's voice, leaning over the back of the lounge to look up at the doorway where the Red Paladin was standing, the thumbs of each hand neatly tucked into his belt loops. "I fell asleep," he said, and immediately felt like an idiot for pointing out the obvious. He shook his head, as though he could manually clear out the lingering fog. "How long was I asleep?"

Keith shrugged in answer and stepped forwards to smoothly sit on the back of the couch. Shiro resettled himself to a more comfortable seated position, balancing his elbows on his knees and burying his head in his hands while he tried to remember every detail about his dream. Was it a dream? He'd thought he was lucid dreaming at some point, but could that really be all there was to it? Or could it have been real?

"I think I saw Lance," Shiro said, leaning back and looking up at Keith. 

Keith tilted his head in question. "You dreamed about him?" He huffed a short, humorless laugh. "That seems to be going around." Shiro gave him a questioning look, prompting him to continue. "Allura was sleepwalking. She thought she could hear Lance. Or the Blue Lion sounding like Lance. I'm not really clear on that."

Shiro gasped, the sound an almost pained hiss that startled Keith above him. "When I spoke to Lance, he said he was somewhere inside Voltron. Or, at least, somewhere that can only be accessed through Voltron specifically."

Keith stared down at him with wide eyes. "I don't understand."

"Neither do I," Shiro groaned, hunching forwards and pinching at the bridge of his nose. It wasn't as effective as it was when he'd done it in his own body. "Not entirely. But I think I get the idea of what he means, at least."

"Did your dream Lance happen to tell you how to get you your body back and get him back into his?" Keith asked, ineffectively trying to keep his scepticism out of his voice.

Shiro sighed and settled back into the couch. "No. He left before I got that far." Silence fell heavily over the pair of them before Shiro felt the urge to break it again. "I don't think it was just a dream."

Even without looking, he could hear the worried, unsure look in Keith's silence. The quiet of someone trying to work out how to diplomatically tell a mentally deficient loved one that their delusions were just that. "I'm serious," Shiro said, jumping in before Keith had a chance. "I think it might have really been Lance."

"Shiro…" Keith said, his tone confirming that Shiro was exactly right in his assessment. "We've done this before."

"And last time, I was right." Shiro insisted, shifting in his seat to turn towards Keith. Lance's voice sounded a lot less commanding and a lot more whining than Shiro had meant it to, so he pressed on. "It lead us to Ulaz."

"Except that was a memory," Keith pointed out reasonably. "This is a dream." 

Shiro couldn't really argue that point, no matter how convinced he was. The defeat must have shown on his face, because Keith sighed sharply and shook his head, expression softening into sympathy. "Even if it wasn't, since I admit that it's pretty suspicious both you and Allura were dreaming of Lance at the same time, what would we do about it? Form Voltron? Then what?"

Shiro slumped, resting his head against the back of the couch. Keith had a point - he had a starting point for where Lance might be, but that didn't tell him how to fix this. "I don't know."

* * *

The darkness around Lance felt like more than just the absence of light. It felt like a physical thing, thick and heavy around him, numbing out his surroundings into softness. Every breath he bothered to breathe was a struggle, as though he were drawing water into his lungs again. It was possible he was, and that thought was enough to send terror clawing up his back again and thoughts racing through his head like rolling thunder. _I never escaped, those few days in the castle were just another hallucination. I'm still trapped in the dark. I deserve to be here. I can't move. I can't feel. Help me. I'm alone._

It was a good thing that he didn't really need to breathe.

It wasn't the same as being in the absolute nothing, though. Lance knew that electricity crackled just beyond the darkness and the light of stars still filtered through. They felt like real things when he reached forwards and touched them, trailing up his veins and dancing across his skin like tongues of flame. They didn't skitter through his hair or try to pull at him. The things he saw weren't the organic constructions of organs and teeth, hair and bone. They were light and energy, wires and plates.

The body and mind he occupied slept, eyes closed and brain humming along in its low powered state. Pain wracked the body, weakness driven down to his bones until they creaked under the strain of it. But sleep was a blessing Lance couldn't quite slip into yet, hovering somewhere just outside. One moment he could feel the bone-deep ache, accompanied by a fear and rage that welled up within that mind, a desperate need to control something, anything. The next he was outside of it all, tethered in place but unable to feel anything, left longing for the ache again to remind him that he wasn't trapped in the dark.

It felt like days before he was able to open his eyes. It was probably hours.

The body he occupied didn't wake up, even with eyes open. To the mind inside, he may as well be seeing nothing. But Lance could see. He could see white hair drifting in the slightly golden fluid he was suspended in but not breathing, mouth covered by a mask instead. He could see the clear door in front of him and the cables that lead from the containment pod he was in over to an enormous, sarcophagus-like structure in the middle of the floor. He could see the pink lights of Galra technology in every corner, the tubes that trailed from his body up to the top of the pod.

He saw the woman in the deep purple robes with white hair who hovered over the sarcophagus. He even heard her speak to the person inside, muffled by liquid and the window between them. Calling the hidden figure by name.

_Zarkon_

Haggar's eyes would sometimes rest on him- on the body he occupied. Lance let Shiro's eyes close and retreated back into the heavy black.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> Shiro caught a nap on the couch and found himself in the astral realm, where he met with a Lance still lost somewhere beyond Voltron. They talked, but Shiro was unable to convince Lance that he was just as worthy of being saved as Shiro himself was before Lance managed to distract him.
> 
> While Shiro was sleeping, Allura was sleepwalking. Keith followed her, worried that she'd do something she didn't want to in her unconcious state and finally stepping in to wake her up before she reached the Blue Lion, worried she might attempt to pilot it in her sleep and end up who knows where, far away and lost with no way to get back.
> 
> Unbeknownst to all, Lance hovers somewhere in a liminal state between nothingness and a containment pod under Haggar's care, linked up to Zarkon in some unknown way...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly shorter-than-normal chapter today. Apologies for that.

It was dark in the castle when Shiro stepped out of his room, Black Lion slippers on his feet to protect against the cold floors, Lance's hoodie zipped up against the chill, and Lance's other clothes bundled up in his arms. His body was still exhausted, screaming at him to sleep, but his mind was over-active and spinning around itself like a dog chasing its own tail. He couldn't stomach the thought of staying in his bed and trying to sleep while the day's events replayed themselves in his mind, spiraling out into restless dreams that woke him almost as soon as they started.

He hadn't dreamed of Lance yet tonight, but he'd barely slept. He'd done his best to recount his dream meeting with Lance to the rest of the team, and Allura was keenly interested in everything he had to say, asking for as many details as he could give and trying to compare them to the half-remembered fragments of her own dreams. Shiro had given her what he could, but only the Lions stirred up any connections in her mind. Another trip to the Black Lion was a bust too, Black reacting to his presence easily but not allowing that deeper connection that allowed Shiro to share their thoughts and memories.

A part of Shiro had wanted to try to form Voltron immediately and just see what happened. The more rational part pointed out that the Black Lion hadn't been especially helpful and that Allura would be taking the role of the Blue Paladin, making this a team that had never actually formed Voltron before. At least the team hadn't completely ruled the idea out, it was simply taking second place to finding the Doctor mentioned in the logs and asking him a few pointed questions about what he'd done to Lance and what he was trying to accomplish. That might at least give the team a place to start understanding where he'd gone, and while Shiro would like to say the thought of some light revenge wasn't on anyone's mind, he couldn't look any of his team in the eye and say that with certainty. He just had to hope that their innate decency and his own self control won out in the end.

That sobering thought had been the final straw that drove him from his restless bed, deciding he'd much rather try to sleep in Lance's room than spend another second lying in his own bed. He couldn't really explain where the urge came from; perhaps the room was more familiar to Lance and his brain interpreted that as safety? It could be as simple as the fact that Lance had found much more comfortable bedding than Shiro had. 

It was a few hours into the Castle's night cycle and the corridors Shiro walked through were lit dimly with only the minimum lighting required, lending everything an air of silence despite the noises of the castle ship being exactly the same as always. Had the halls always been so cold during the night? Lance didn't act like he especially felt the cold, but Shiro could feel it clinging uncomfortably to him now, tracing fine shivers up and down his skin. Unless that was fear rather than the low temperature.

He turned down the hall that lead to what were jokingly called the 'Leg Rooms' and jerked to a stop when he saw a large, shadowed figure sitting with his back against the wall. A completely unfounded chill ran through him upon realising that he wasn't alone in his urge to get up and wander around the castle in the dark and he immediately berated himself for his instinctive overreaction. At least he wasn't the only one startled, judging by the surprised jump and squeak that told Shiro exactly who he'd run into.

"Hunk?" Shiro asked, almost flinching again at how loud his own voice sounded. "What are you doing up so late? Or early?"

Hunk stared at him wide-eyed before settling back against the wall just as the prolonged silence went from strange to uncomfortable. "Oh… right. Hi Shiro." He held up a metal thermos, wisps of condensation visibly curling out of it in the low blue light. "I couldn't sleep, so I decided to get myself some hot fauxcolate. Then I didn't want to sit alone in the kitchen or my room."

"Okay, and why exactly are you sitting- wait, did you say 'fauxcolate'?" Shiro stepped closer, noticing a faint, sweet and nutty smell in the air. "As in fake chocolate?"

Hunk pulled a face. "As close as I could get it. It's a work in progress. The malt's really good though." He held up a cup. "Want some?"

Shiro looked between Hunk and the cup a moment before making a decision. "Yes. Please," he added as an afterthought, placing Lance's folded-up clothes beside Hunk and sitting on them while Hunk refilled the metal cup. The scent of warm milk, roasted chestnuts and the faint aroma of malt rose from the drink, the combination not quite enough like anything Shiro had ever experienced before to be nostalgic, but close enough to make him feel like it should be comforting.

Taking a sip, Shiro concluded that the drink was still a long way away from hot chocolate. It tasted like some mix of chocolate, vanilla, caramel, and pecan that managed to not taste enough like any of them for him to confidently say that's what it was. Still… "It's not bad. Not really chocolate, but it's still kind of nice." He took another drink, turning the cup in his hands. "Huh. This is real milk, isn't it?"

"Straight from the cow," Hunk said proudly before turning sheepish. "With a few pasteurization steps in between then and this cup."

Silence fell as Shiro slowly sipped at his drink, enjoying the warmth that suffused his body. Hunk shifted nervously beside him, eyes darting between Shiro and the far wall, brows knit together with thought. Shiro stayed quiet and gave him time to say whatever it was that was on his mind.

"Do you think it's worth looking for this Doctor Aunwor guy?" Hunk finally asked, finger tracing out patterns on the floor beside him. "I mean, I have some questions that he should be able to answer, but will knowing really help, or just make me feel better?"

That didn't feel like the question Hunk really wanted to ask, so Shiro gave him a few seconds longer, only answering when it became clear he wasn't going to continue. "We won't know for sure until we speak to him and it could be days before we can even find him. Maybe he'll give us the key to getting Lance back, maybe he won't. At least we'll understand better and we can tell Lance why all this happened, if he wants to know. I'd always want the option at least to know what was done to me and why. Not knowing if someone's done something to you to specifically target your team is..." Shiro trailed off, letting himself take a deep, calming breath before continuing. "It's a bad headspace to be in."

Hunk nodded, staring thoughtfully into the empty space in front of him. "Yeah. That makes sense." He paused again and returned to his anxious fidgeting, silence stretching on as he gathered himself and his next words. "What will happen if we work out how to get Lance back, but we can't get you back in your body?"

There it was. The question everyone had avoided asking so far, looming over them like the dark shadow of a hawk. Everything had been 'What happened to Lance?' 'What happened to Shiro?' 'How do we undo it?' 'How did they swap?' No one had dared to ask what would be done if only one of them could return. Shiro had no hesitation with his answer. "I'll make sure Lance is back in his own body. If I have to wait a little longer, it's okay. You guys will figure something out."

Hunk fixed Shiro with a long, searching look, which Shiro cunningly avoided by taking another mouthful of the hot fauxcolate. "I'm worried that Lance will fight you on that," Hunk sighed, stealing the cup from Shiro's hand and draining the last of it before refilling it and handing it back.

"He did say he deserved to be in the darkness," Shiro admitted quietly, conceding that point at least.

"He's said that a couple of times since the moon lab," Hunk confirmed, resting his head back against the wall. "I don't know what to do," he admitted in a small, quiet voice. "I want Lance back, but I don't want to just throw you into the void to get him. I don't want to have to swap people back and forth. I just want everyone here, why can't we just have that?"

"We'll work something out," Shiro said with a confidence he didn't feel. "We always do."

Silence fell again, but this time Hunk made no move to break it, leaving Shiro to stare down into the creamy brown liquid in his cup. The taste was starting to grow on him and the warmth it gave was soothing, quieting his racing thoughts and quivering skin. It felt easy to ask those kinds of difficult questions just then, like they were protected from repercussions by the darkness, the comforting drink, and the quiet surroundings. A question occurred to Shiro, and he realised that this may well be the best time to ask it, to take a step into understanding the unknown and unacknowledged. His vest in Lance's closet, his picture in Lance's notebook, Lance trying to get closer to him, Lance's words in their shared dream that Shiro was certain he wasn't meant to hear and that he'd decided not to think about until this mess they were in was fixed one way or another. 

Hunk had asked a tough question, it was only fair for Shiro to ask one of his own. It may be the only time he'd let himself and the thought gave him the feeling of being at the top of a roller coaster or piloting his Lion directly towards the ground below. "How long has Lance had a crush on me?"

Hunk barked a startled laugh, the question taking him by surprise. "Man, I don't know." He shook his head and chuckled again. "I mean, I'd say since he met you, but he recognised you immediately when the Garrison had captured you after the crash. He called you his hero, so maybe before that it was like a fly-boy nerd-crush or something." He turned to face Shiro, the lines of his sympathetic smile blurred in the low light.

Shiro could feel the heat rising in his face and was grateful that the darkness would probably hide most of it. There was something about being told plainly that someone had called you their personal hero that made it strike home, sitting awkward and ill-fitting in his chest. The discrepancy both made him uncomfortable and put a smile on his face and he had the childish urge to hug something and hide behind it until at least one of those feelings subsided.

"But I could probably tell you how long ago he fell in love with you," Hunk continued.

Everything stopped, thoughts stalling and collapsing into silence as Shiro's smile fell. The way Hunk said it made it clear to him that there was a difference, an escalation to 'more than a crush' that managed to blindside him and leave him with only one word.

_Oh._

There were questions that Shiro should probably be asking instead of just repeating 'oh' over and over in his head. 'Could Lance really be in love with him, or was Hunk exaggerating?', 'Do I feel something in return?', 'Is it strong enough to be called love?', 'Can I admit it if it is?' or even 'Why does Lance keep flirting with every pretty alien girl _including_ Allura in front of me if he's in love with me? Is he trying to make me jealous?' for example. None of them managed to be quite coherent in his cloud of thoughts, falling half-formed back into oblivion. Being told that someone was in love with you should elicit some kind of thought more than just 'oh' and white noise, especially when it was someone you liked and found undeniably attractive.

_Oh?_

Dread pooled in his mind as realisation crept in. He'd been so careful to keep his thoughts and longings under control, he couldn't have fallen that far without him noticing, could he? He knew that Lance had flaws, of course. He loved attention and dramatics, he was prone to jealousy, and he trusted way too easily. But even repeating those flaws to himself, Shiro couldn't help but remember the way Lance's eyes lit up when he saw something strange and beautiful, or the way Lance was quick to knock someone out of an oncoming attack, physical or verbal, even if it meant taking the blow himself. How he'd set aside his own feelings if he saw that someone else was genuinely suffering. He was light in a way that Shiro was still trying to get back to and genuinely sweet when he wasn't trying to impress everyone around him and just let himself be himself. Some days Shiro couldn't see a future for himself beyond the war and someone like Lance could still think they were in love with him?

_Oh!_

"Sh-ro? -okay?" Shiro heard, the words fragmented and far away, followed by a quieter "-have said -thing." It was hard to hear even that over the euphoria of his epiphany. His head was filled with the hum of his thoughts, the rush of blood in his ears and the ba-thump of his own heart. 

The cup was removed from his hand and Shiro finally noticed that his arm was trembling. The warmth of his blush had grown to fill his whole body, leaving him pleasantly light and fluttery, and his heart was beating loud enough that he had to wonder if he'd be able to see it visibly moving through his chest if he looked down.

No, it wasn't Shiro's heart, it was Lance's heart currently trying to escape Lance's body because Hunk told him that Lance was in love with him. His instinct was to downplay the revelation and say that Lance must be in love with some idealised version of Shiro that didn't truly exist, but he wasn't ready to lock up the light, warm feeling yet. He wanted to believe it for just a moment longer, let himself experience this electric rush of long-ignored feeling.

That answered at least one of his questions then; he definitely felt something in return, and it was a lot stronger than he'd convinced himself it was. The realisation settled into his chest, twisting painfully against the weightless feeling, regret running along the edges of his revelation.

"Shiro? Hey, you alright?" Hunk waved a hand in front of Shiro's face, pulling him out of his head and back into the present. "Wow, even in this light, I can tell you've gone completely red," Hunk said with a nervous laugh and poked Shiro's cheek. "I guess you didn't know that, huh?"

Shiro shook his head. Hunk's face blurred in front of him, prompting him to raise his hands awkwardly to his face to scrub any trace of tears away before they could fall. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a pitiful croak and he had to clear his throat to try again. "Thank you for telling me," he managed.

Hunk's hands hovered awkwardly in the air, halfway to wrapping around Shiro's shoulders before he started doubting that course of action. "You're welcome?" He sounded unsure of even that. "I can't tell if those are happy tears, angry tears or 'oh god, now everything is more awkward than ever and I'm going to die of embarrassment' tears." Seemingly, making up his mind, he placed a hand on Shiro's near shoulder instead of pulling him into a hug, rubbing a thumb in small, soothing circles. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have told you that. I just figured when you asked… Lance should have told you himself, I wasn't thinking," he continued rambling nervously, his free hand rummaging in the pockets of his robe before pulling out a square of soft fabric and handing it over. "It's clean," he promised, before turning serious. "Are you okay? You kind of blue-screened on me there."

"Sorry." Shiro accepted the square, recognising it quickly as one of Pidge's glasses-cleaning cloths. With a mental shrug he dabbed at his eyes with it anyway, trying to stem the flow of tears. "I wasn't expecting you to say that Lance was in love with me." He offered Hunk a smile, surprised by how easily it came to his face, how natural it felt despite his stinging eyes. "It hit me harder than I thought it would and made me realise something, that's all."

Hunk gave him a questioning look, but Shiro ignored it and sat back against the wall, drawing his knees up closer to his chest. He wasn't ready to give any more than that just yet, still turning the new rush of emotions over in his head.

It took several long seconds for Hunk to accept that he wasn't going to get any more, no matter how much he raised an eyebrow or stared. With a sigh, he settled back against the wall as well, letting a comfortable silence fall between them.

* * *

Keith made his way back to his room much later than he'd intended. He'd been too wired to even think about sleep when Shiro had retired, still trying to sort through his thoughts and feelings for the day. It was a lot to process and a few rounds with the training gladiator usually helped things settle into his mind, even if it didn't mean he understood them better. It hadn't helped much tonight, but Keith still held out hope that his thoughts would be clearer after a night's rest, even if they didn't make any more sense. 

He stepped off the elevator and began the short trip to his room, already anticipating his bed, when a turn around a corner revealed Hunk and La- Shiro sitting in the dim hallway, their backs against the wall. Several irrational thoughts ran through Keith's mind in quick succession. First came the fear that they'd been knocked unconscious, immediately dispelled by the fact that they were clearly talking and moving, just sitting in a weird location for no discernable reason. Next was the urge to head back and take the long way around to his room to avoid any awkwardness. Finally there was anger with himself for even considering that. He squared his shoulders and walked purposefully up the corridor.

Shiro looked up at the sound of his footsteps, eyes glistening unusually in the blue lights. Had he been crying? Keith's steps slowed, taking in as much of Shiro's appearance as he could in the low light. He still wasn't sure, and he couldn't remember how Lance looked when he cried to compare it to. Realising he'd been staring, Keith wrenched his gaze away only for it to immediately meet Hunk's.

Hunk quickly looked away, staring at the ground between himself and Shiro. Keith swallowed heavily and glanced back at Shiro, but the sympathetic look he got didn't help when it was painted across Lance's face. He turned back to the hall ahead of him and resumed walking, the sound of his footsteps uncomfortably loud in the awkward silence.

"Keith," Hunk's voice stopped him, igniting a flutter of hope in his chest. Hunk didn't wait for Keith to turn back and face him before continuing. "Why did you keep choosing me?"

Keith spun at that, studying Hunks face for some clue about what he meant. Hunk remained staring thoughtfully at the wall across from him, eyes barely flickering in Keith's direction. He looked to Shiro for some context, but Shiro looked just as confused, gaze darting self-consciously between Hunk and Keith.

The silence stretched on long enough for Hunk to explain. "After you got into that screaming match with Lance about not going out on your own, you started asking me to head out with you on missions. The first couple of times I figured you were just trying to stick it to Lance after the stuff he said. It was nice to be your first choice, but I was sure you'd eventually start splitting the team so that if you needed range, you'd have Lance covering you instead. Except that didn't happen, you kept asking me to go with you if you needed backup, even when Lance stopped arguing with you all the time." Finally he turned to face Keith, fixing him with such an unusually grave expression that it held back any interruptions he might have. "Even when you didn't need someone to work with machines or do any heavy lifting, you kept picking me. So I was wondering why?"

Keith wanted to laugh, but Hunk's seriousness held him pinned him in place, let him know that Hunk wasn't joking in a way that made his heart ache and left him floundering uselessly as he tried to come up with something to say. He had to look ridiculous with his mouth opening and closing as each half-formed idea died before it made its way out of his mouth. Why was it so hard to put things into words? Why did everything need to be said for someone else to understand it?

There was only one thing that Keith could think to say. "I thought you were the one who picked me." He gave himself a moment to search for the right words. "It seemed natural to work with you."

Hunk's stared at him blankly for an uncomfortable age before he snorted an aborted laugh and grinned, and suddenly Keith could breathe again. He held up the metal cup and a thermos that Keith hadn't noticed until now. "Want some? There's still a little bit left, though it's kind of cold now. It's supposed to taste like chocolate."

Keith nodded, but hesitated before stepping forwards. He would accept the offer either way, but he had to ask. "Does this mean-"

"I'm still angry," Hunk said, "that hasn't stopped. But I'm going to try to forgive you. I just… I want everything to go back to how it was before. So," he held his arms out, Shiro flinching back as the back of Hunk's hand suddenly covered his face, "come here and get your hug and milk drink already."

Keith sighed, almost collapsing with relief when he finally moved down towards Hunk. He didn't really feel like he'd done anything to earn forgiveness yet, but he wasn't going to turn it down if it was offered. He'd just have to live up to it later, and he'd start by keeping any doubts he had about whether things could be the same to himself.

He was used to the way that Hunk put his whole body into his hugs and completely engulfed anyone caught in his arms, but he was still pulled off balance by the force of it and the slight sway Hunk gave as he tried to somehow put more into it. It left Keith with all his weight taken by Hunk, only able to pat him on the shoulders and head in lieu of actually hugging back, but he hoped it got his appreciation across well enough. He was eventually released, letting him retreat a small way and regain some equilibrium while Hunk upended his thermos and emptied the contents into the cup before handing it over to him. He settled himself against the wall across from them, stretching out his legs comfortably and taking a confident mouthful of the drink before nearly choking on it as he'd inadvertently gasped.

"Hey, not so fast," Shiro admonished, leaning forwards with an arm raised towards him as though worried he'd fall over. Keith waived a hand at him while coughing, trying to signal that he'd be fine in a moment. 

"That bad, huh?" Hunk asked sadly.

Keith shook his head, airways finally cleared enough to speak. "I just wasn't expecting it to taste like you put a malted milkshake and pecan pie filling into a blender."

Hunk tapped his cheek thoughtfully. "I could turn it it into an actual pie."

Keith settled back against the wall and took a slower drink, letting Hunk's thoughts about pies and idle observations wash over him between silences. All too soon he sat the empty cup down beside him, torn between handing it back to Hunk and taking that as his cue to head to bead or staying to bask in the quiet moment a little longer before tomorrow became a whirlwind of planning and investigations.

The option was taken out of his hands by Allura appearing in the hall carrying a distinctly Pidge-shaped bundle on her back, breaking Keith out of his peaceful mood. She stopped in her tracks when she noticed them, the suddenness of it jolting Pidge from a comfortable near-sleep state against Allura's shoulder and drawing a grumpy mumble from her.

"We do have lounge rooms, you know," Allura said after taking the scene in. "You don't need to all sit on the floor. In the dark," she added pointedly, and Keith felt irrationally like he'd been caught sneaking out past his bedtime. Hunk responded by hunching over self-consciously so at least he wasn't the only one.

Pidge peered past Allura's hair at the trio. "What's…" She blinked, eyebrows scrunched up in confusion. "Did I miss some sort of hallway meeting call?" She looked around. "Hold on, where's my computer?"

"It will be there for you tomorrow," Allura replied soothingly.

Shiro yawned and tucked his legs under him and rose easily, pausing to grab the bundle he'd been sitting on. "I think that's my cue to head to bed. Goodnight everyone" he said, lightly tousling Pidge's hair on the way past. "Sleep well, Pidge."

"Sleep is for the weak," Pidge mumbled, resting her head back on Allura's shoulders. "G'night, Lance. We'll find you tomorrow."

Shiro froze for a tick, eyes wide before he withdrew his hand like he'd been burned. Keith couldn't even make it to his feet before Shiro had fled the short distance down the hall to Lance's room.

* * *

The watery moon filled Keith's view as they approached, dark sweeping clouds making it look like a sphere of polished onyx set against the greater blackness of space. Allura's hands were steady on the Blue Lion's controls, face set into determined focus as they approached. Beside her, Shiro leaned forwards, resting a hand against the back of the chair to balance while he angled himself for a clearer view. Keith had been against Shiro coming on this mission, he'd woken up in Lance's body just over three days ago and he still hadn't regained the stamina Lance had before his capture or caught up to the fighting skill and control that he'd had of his own body. But Shiro had been insistent on seeing the moon lab for himself and Keith had capitulated. He was wishing he'd held his ground now. 

On the far side of the planet, the lower decks of a Galran battleship peeked through the clouds. "How big is this moon again?" Shiro asked. 

Allura pressed a few buttons on her console, bringing up a display on the front viewscreen that outlined the moon with a pale blue glow. Altean text appeared shortly after, numbers scrolling too fast to read before settling on a value that was promptly translated to English measurements.

Shiro closed his eyes and nodded to himself for a moment before speaking again. "It's not a cruiser then, it's too small, but it looks big enough to house a battalion on board if it's fully packed. It'd be best to approach without being seen. Allura, can you scan the moon?"

Allura shook her head. "The atmosphere has a high mineral content that disrupts our scanners. Even the Blue Lion's sonar can't penetrate, it would only move the clouds out of the way. Which would immediately be noticed."

"But if we stay on this side until after we get into the water we might be able to sneak past them," Keith added.

Shiro flicked on the com in his helmet. "Pidge, will Green's cloaking work underwater?"

"Good question. Hold on," Pidge replied.

"Hunk and Pidge may be able to get there more directly in Green if Pidge's cloaking will work underwater," Shiro said in reply to Keith's confused look, leaning back and crossing his arms. The move didn't look as commanding when Lance did it. "Otherwise, we'll need to regroup and get everyone into Blue before heading in."

Pidge's voice cut back over the coms. "It'll work. Scanners won't pick us up, but we'll still displace the clouds or water around us, so someone using their eyes might. Luckily, visibility sucks once you're in the water anyway, so they wouldn't see us until we were on top of them."

"Alright," Shiro said, nodding to Keith, who shook his head and motioned for Shiro to continue. 

A silent argument followed, which Shiro won with a stern eyebrow lift that Keith couldn't take seriously on Lance's face. "Approach directly," he said, trying to avoid laughing in Shiro’s face. "We'll need to travel underwater in Blue to avoid that ship spotting us. Get into the lab if you can, but don't engage. Report on what you see."

"What if there is some sort of scanning up?" Pidge asked. "You might not be able to get close if they've decided that they don't want to have their lab chewed on again."

"If that happens, we'll just have to see who is better in the water," Allura replied, sparing Keith from having to formulate a response. "Galra drones or the Blue Lion."

"I know who my money's on," Hunk mumbled.

Shiro nodded and straightened up, issuing one final order. "Stay safe everyone."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some parts of any story where you have them planned from the start. Just moments you really want to write. This is one of those moments for me - Hunk and Shiro sitting in the hallway, drinking hot chocolate and talking about their feelings, followed by Shiro kind of freaking out about everything. There are a lot of those moments in this fic, but this one was one that had been rising into my mind to be re-written and re-contextualised regularly. So even if it's not as good as some of the other parts, I'm still kind of glad I finally got to write it.


End file.
